SILCC-Zoom: H2 and CO-dark gas in molecular clouds – the impact of feedback and magnetic fields

We analyse the CO-dark molecular gas content of simulated molecular clouds from the SILCC-Zoom project. The simulations reach a resolution of 0.1 pc and include H2 and CO formation, radiative stellar feedback and magnetic fields. CO-dark gas is found in regions with local visual extinctions $A_\rm {V, 3D} \sim$ 0.2–1.5, number densities of 10–103 cm−3 and gas temperatures of few 10–100 K. CO-bright gas is found at number densities above 300 cm−3 and temperatures below 50 K. The CO-dark gas fractions range from 40 per cent to 95 per cent and scale inversely with the amount of well-shielded gas ($A_\rm {V, 3D}$ ≳ 1.5), which is smaller in magnetized molecular clouds. We show that the density, chemical abundances and $A_\rm {V, 3D}$ along a given line-of-sight cannot be properly determined from projected quantities. As an example, pixels with a projected visual extinction of $A_\rm {V, 2D} \simeq$ 2.5–5 can be both, CO-bright or CO-dark, which can be attributed to the presence or absence of strong density enhancements along the line-of-sight. By producing synthetic CO(1-0) emission maps of the simulations with RADMC-3D, we show that about 15–65 per cent of the H2 is in regions with intensities below the detection limit. Our clouds have $X_\rm {CO}$-factors around 1.5 × 1020 cm−2 (K km s−1)−1 with a spread of up to a factor ∼ 4, implying a similar uncertainty in the derived total H2 masses and even worse for individual pixels. Based on our results, we suggest a new approach to determine the H2 mass, which relies on the availability of CO(1-0) emission and $A_\rm {V, 2D}$ maps. It reduces the uncertainty of the clouds’ overall H2 mass to a factor of ≲ 1.8 and for individual pixels, i.e. on sub-pc scales, to a factor of ≲ 3.