Molecular emission from the Perseus cloud

In all cases, the line intensity is tightly correlated with the H_2_ column density. For the CO isotopologs, the correlation is relatively flat, while for most dense gas tracers, the correlation is approximately linear. To reproduce these trends, we have developed a cloud model in which most species have abundance profiles characterized by an outer photo-dissociation edge and an inner freeze-out drop.

With this model we determine that the intensity behavior of the dense gas tracers arises from a combination of excitation effects and molecular freeze out, with some modulation from optical depth. The quasi-linear dependence of the dense-gas tracer emission with H_2_ column density makes the gas at low column densities dominate the cloud- integrated emission. It also makes this emission proportional to the cloud mass inside the photodissociation edge.

Stratified random sampling is an efficient technique to characterize the emission from molecular clouds. Despite its complex appearance, the molecular emission from Perseus presents a relatively simple behavior that, from a limited comparison with other clouds, seems to reflect a general pattern.