ArXiv · 2026
Obtaining accurate estimates of the gas column density N(H₂) is crucial to determine the physical conditions of the molecular gas in the Interstellar Medium. This paper introduces the "Multi-Tracer Column Density Synthesis" (MT-CDS) technique, a new empirical approach to derive high dynamic-range column density maps with interferometers such as ALMA. We have compared the integrated intensity maps of two density selective tracers, namely HNC (1-0) and N₂H⁺ (1-0), obtained with IRAM-30m with ancillary Herschel column density estimates in seven star-forming regions in Orion and derived individual temperature-corrected conversion factors for each of these tracers. We applied these conversion factors obtained at low-resolution into similar high sensitivity ALMA observations to derive independent column density maps describing both the low NHNC(H₂) and high NN₂H⁺(H₂) column density components at high spatial resolution (4.5"). We also combined these independent maps into estimates for the total gas column density gas Ntot(H₂) sampling more than two orders of magnitude in column density between ∼ 10^(21.5)-10^(23.5) cm⁻². A comparison with independent ArTeMiS column density maps at intermediate resolution (8") shows typical deviations of ≲0.2 dex from our MT-CDS gas column density estimates. We obtained individual column density maps in five of our targets at ∼2000 au resolution in which ALMA observations were available, that is a factor of ∼5 better than originally calibrated. These results demonstrate the potential of this MT-CDS technique to retrieve accurate, high dynamic range N(H₂) total gas column density estimates at interferometric resolution combining multiple molecular line tracers.
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