The CO-dark molecular gas in the cold HI arc (2405.02055v1)

Abstract: The CO-dark molecular gas (DMG), which refers to the molecular gas not traced by CO emission, is crucial for the evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM). While the gas properties of DMG have been widely explored in the Solar neighborhood, whether or not they are similar in the outer disk regions of the Milky Way is still not well understood. In this Letter, we confirm the existence of DMG toward a cold HI arc structure at 13 kpc away from the Galactic center with both OH emission and HI narrow self-absorption (HINSA). This is the first detection of HINSA in the outer disk region, in which the HINSA fraction ($N_{\rm HINSA}$/$N_{\rm H_2}$ = 0.022$\pm$0.011) is an order of magnitude higher than the average value observed in nearby evolved dark clouds, but is consistent with that of the early evolutionary stage of dark clouds. The inferred H$2$ column density from both extinction and OH emission ($N{\rm H_2} \approx 10^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$) is an order of magnitude higher than previously estimated. Although the ISM environmental parameters are expected to be different between the outer Galactic disk regions and the Solar neighborhood, we find that the visual extinction ($A_{\rm V}$ = 0.19$\pm$0.03 mag), H$2$-gas density ($n{\rm H_2} = 91\pm46$ cm$^{-3}$), and molecular fraction (58\%$\pm$28\%) of the DMG are rather similar to those of nearby diffuse molecular clouds. The existence of DMG associated with the expanding HI supershell supports a scenario where the expansion of supershells may trigger the formation of molecular clouds within a crossing timescale of the shock wave ($\sim$10$^6$ yr).