arXiv subjects

Raffaele Rani

Publications and source records attributed to Raffaele Rani.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

MAJORS II: HCO+& HCN Abundances in W40

We present observations of HCN and HCO$^+$ J = $3 - 2$ in the central $424'' \times 424''$ region of the W40 massive star forming region. The observations were taken as part of a pilot project for the MAJORS large program at the JCMT telescope. By incorporating prior knowledge of N(H$_2$) and $T_K$, assuming a constant density, and using the RADEX radiative transfer code we found that the HCN and HCO$^+$ abundances range from $X$(HCN) = $0.4-7.0 \times 10^{-8}$ and $X$(HCO$^+$) = $0.4-7.3 \times 10^{-9}$. Additional modelling using the NAUTILUS chemical evolution code, that takes H$_2$ density variations into account, however, suggests the HCN and HCO$^+$ abundances may be fairly constant. Careful modelling of three different positions finds $X$(HCN) = $1.3-1.7 \times 10^{-8}$, $X$(HCO$^+$) = $1.3-3.1 \times 10^{-9}$. Cross-comparison of the two models also provides a crude estimate of the gas density producing the HCN and HCO$^+$ emission, with H$_2$ densities in the range $5 \times 10^4 - 5 \times 10^5$ cm$^{-3}$, suggesting that the HCN and HCO$^+$ emission does indeed arise from dense gas. High UV intensity (e.g. $G_o >$ a few thousand) has no effect on the abundances in regions where the visual extinction is large enough to effectively shield the gas from the UV field. In regions where $A_V < 6$, however, the abundance of both species is lowered due to destructive reactions with species that are directly affected by the radiation field.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2024

The impact of shear on the rotation of Galactic plane molecular clouds

Stars form in the densest regions of molecular clouds, however, there is no universal understanding of the factors that regulate cloud dynamics and their influence on the gas-to-stars conversion. This study considers the impact of Galactic shear on the rotation of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and its relation to the solenoidal modes of turbulence. We estimate the direction of rotation for a large sample of clouds in the \ce{^{13}CO}/\ce{C^{18}O} (3-2) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey (CHIMPS) and their corresponding sources in a new segmentation of the \ce{^{12}CO}(3-2) High-Resolution Survey (COHRS). To quantify the strength of shear, we introduce a parameter that describes the shear's ability to disrupt growing density perturbations within the cloud. Although we find no correlation between the direction of cloud rotation, the shear parameter, and the magnitude of the velocity gradient, the solenoidal fraction of the turbulence in the CHIMPS sample is positively correlated with the shear parameter and behaves similarly when plotted over Galactocentric distance. GMCs may thus not be large or long-lived enough to be affected by shear to the point of showing rotational alignment. In theory, Galactic shear can facilitate the rise of solenoidal turbulence and thus contribute to suppressing star formation. These results also suggest that the rotation of clouds is not strictly related to the overall rotation of the disc, but is more likely to be the imprint of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in the colliding flows that formed the clouds.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

Identification of molecular clouds in emission maps: a comparison between methods in the \ce{^{13}CO}/\ce{C^{18}O} ($J=3-2$) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey

The growing range of automated algorithms for the identification of molecular clouds and clumps in large observational datasets has prompted the need for the direct comparison of these procedures. However, these methods are complex and testing for biases is often problematic: only a few of them have been applied to the same data set or calibrated against a common standard. We compare the Fellwalker method, a widely used watershed algorithm, to the more recent Spectral Clustering for Interstellar Molecular Emission Segmentation (SCIMES). SCIMES overcomes sensitivity and resolution biases that plague many friends-of-friends algorithms by recasting cloud segmentation as a clustering problem. Considering the \ce{^{13}CO}/\ce{C^{18}O} ($J = 3 - 2$) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey (CHIMPS) and the CO High-Resolution Survey (COHRS), we investigate how these two different approaches influence the final cloud decomposition. Although the two methods produce largely similar statistical results over the CHIMPS dataset, FW appears prone to over-segmentation, especially in crowded fields where gas envelopes around dense cores are identified as adjacent, distinct objects. FW catalogue also includes a number of fragmented clouds that appear as different objects in a line-of-sight projection. In addition, cross-correlating the physical properties of individual sources between catalogues is complicated by different definitions, numerical implementations, and design choices within each method, which make it very difficult to establish a one-to-one correspondence between the sources.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Solenoidal turbulent modes and star formation efficiency in Galactic-plane molecular clouds

It is speculated that the high star-formation efficiency observed in spiral-arm molecular clouds is linked to the prevalence of compressive (curl-free) turbulent modes, while the shear-driven solenoidal (divergence-free) modes appear to be the main cause of the low star-formation efficiency that characterises clouds in the Central Molecular Zone. Similarly, analysis of the Orion B molecular cloud has confirmed that, although turbulent modes vary locally and at different scales within the cloud, the dominant solenoidal turbulence is compatible with its low star formation rate. This evidence points to inter-and intra-cloud fluctuations of the solenoidal modes being an agent for the variability of star formation efficiency. We present a quantitative estimation of the relative fractions of momentum density in the solenoidal modes of turbulence in a large sample of plane molecular clouds in the \ce{^{13}CO}/\ce{C^{18}O} ($J=3\rightarrow 2$) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey (CHIMPS). We find a negative correlation between the solenoidal fraction and star-formation efficiency. This feature is consistent with the hypothesis that solenoidal modes prevent or slow down the collapse of dense cores. In addition, the relative power in the solenoidal modes of turbulence (solenoidal fraction) appears to be higher in the Inner Galaxy declining with a shallow gradient with increasing Galactocentric distance. Outside the Inner Galaxy, the slowly, monotonically declining values suggest that the solenoidal fraction is unaffected by the spiral arms.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Compact galaxies and the size-mass galaxy distribution from a colour-selected sample at 0.04 < z < 0.15 supplemented by ugrizYJHK photometric redshifts

The size-mass galaxy distribution is a key diagnostic for galaxy evolution. Massive compact galaxies are potential surviving relics of a high-redshift phase of star formation. Some of these could be nearly unresolved in SDSS imaging and thus not included in galaxy samples. To overcome this, a sample was selected from the combination of SDSS and UKIDSS photometry to r<17.8. This was done using colour-colour selection, and then by obtaining accurate photometric redshifts (photo-z) using scaled flux matching (SFM). Compared to spectroscopic redshifts (spec-z), SFM obtained a 1-sigma scatter of 0.0125 with only 0.3% outliers (Delta:ln(1+z)>0.06). A sample of 163186 galaxies was obtained with 0.04 10.5) compared to 92% for normal-size galaxies. This difference is primarily attributed to SDSS `fibre collisions' and not the completeness of the main galaxy sample selection. Using environmental overdensities, this confirms that compact quiescent galaxies are significantly more likely to be found in high-density environments compared to normal-size galaxies. By comparison with a high-redshift sample from 3D-HST, log:Sigma_1.5 distribution functions show significant evolution, with this being a compelling way to compare with simulations such as EAGLE. The number density of compact quiescent galaxies drops by a factor of about 30 from z~2 to log(n/Mpc^-3)=-5.3+-0.4 in the SDSS-UKIDSS sample. The uncertainty is dominated by the steep cut off in log:Sigma_1.5, which is demonstrated conclusively using this complete sample.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2017

Phase Space Structures of k-threshold Sequential Dynamical Systems

Sequential dynamical systems (SDS) are used to model a wide range of processes occurring on graphs or networks. The dynamics of such discrete dynamical systems is completely encoded by their phase space, a directed graph whose vertices and edges represent all possible system configurations and transitions between configurations respectively. Direct calculation of the phase space is in most cases a computationally demanding task. However, for some classes of SDS one can extract information on the connected component structure of phase space from the constituent elements of the SDS, such as its base graph and vertex functions. We present a number of novel results about the connected component structure of the phase space for k-threshold dynamical system with binary state spaces. We establish relations between the structure of the components, the threshold value, and the update sequence. Also fixed-point reachability from garden of eden configurations is investigated and upper bounds for the length of paths in the phase space are shown to only depend on the size of the vertex set of the base graph.

math.DS↗

arXiv2003

Killing Tensors and Conformal Killing Tensors from Conformal Killing Vectors

Koutras has proposed some methods to construct reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors (which are, in general, irreducible) when a pair of orthogonal conformal Killing vectors exist in a given space. We give the completely general result demonstrating that this severe restriction of orthogonality is unnecessary. In addition we correct and extend some results concerning Killing tensors constructed from a single conformal Killing vector. A number of examples demonstrate how it is possible to construct a much larger class of reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors than permitted by the Koutras algorithms. In particular, by showing that all conformal Killing tensors are reducible in conformally flat spaces, we have a method of constructing all conformal Killing tensors (including all the Killing tensors which will in general be irreducible) of conformally flat spaces using their conformal Killing vectors.

gr-qc↗