Properties of interstellar filaments as derived from $Herschel$, $Planck$, and molecular line observations

Abstract

Recent \herschel\ and \planck\ observations of submillimeter dust emission revealed the omnipresence of filamentary structures in the interstellar medium (ISM). The ubiquity of filaments in quiescent clouds as well as in star-forming regions indicates that the formation of filamentary structures is a natural product of the physics at play in the magnatized turbulent cold ISM. An analysis of more than 270 filaments observed with {\it Herschel} in 8 regions of the Gould Belt, shows that interstellar filaments are characterized by a narrow distribution of central width, while they span a wide column density range. Molecular line observations of a sample of these filaments show evidence of an increase in the velocity dispersion of dense filaments with column density, suggesting an evolution in mass per unit length due to accretion of surrounding material onto these star-forming filaments. The analyses of \planck\ dust polarization observations show that the mean magnetic field along the filaments is different from that of their surrounding clouds. This points to a coupling between the matter and the $\vec{B}$-field in the filament formation process. These observational results, derived from dust and gas tracers in total and polarized intensity, set strong constraints on theoretical models for filament formation and evolution. They also provide important hints on the initial conditions of the star formation process from the fragmentation of dense (supercritical) filaments. Higher resolution dust polarization observations and large scale molecular line mapping are nevertheless required to investigate in more details the internal structure of interstellar filaments.