Quantifying the structure of the molecular interstellar medium with the G-virial method

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Molecular gas constitutes the coldest and densest phase of the Milky Way interstellar medium (ISM), and this is the phase that is directly related to star formation. However, the structure of the molecular ISM has only been quantified in limited ways, and how gravity functions in the ISM is still not clear. During his PhD, the applicant developed a new method named G-virial to quantify the molecular ISM. The new method works directly on the simulated or observed data. It generate maps of the importance of gravity in this space, which can be directly linked to star formation and used to derive various properties of the gravitational-coherent gas condensations including mass-radius and mass-velocity relations. In the proposed project, we plan synthesize the available results from the state-of-the-art simulations and observations from the Galactic scale to the individual star-forming cores with the G-virial, and answer several fundamental questions in molecular ISM study: What are the structures of the gravitationally-coherent regions in molecular clouds? What factors determine them? How are the properties of the gravitationally-coherent regions related to star formation? It there an evolution sequence of the regions? How are the dynamics of molecular clouds coupled to the dynamics of the Milky Way? Moreover, the project links the theoretical and observational studies of the molecular ISM, and will offer an interface where different projects in the ISM-SPP priority project can be connected in the future.