Investigations of MWISP Bubbles: Identification and Analysis of Enclosed Molecular Bubbles by Weight Fields

arXiv:2608.01052 · astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM · Submitted 2026-08-02 · Read on arXiv

Yu Jiang, Xuepeng Chen, Ji Yang, Ke Wang, Zhibo Jiang, Sheng Zheng, Yan Sun, Yang Su, Min Fang, Qing-Zeng Yan

astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM

Submitted: 2026-08-02

Comments: 23 pages, 15 figures. Published in The Astronomical Journal, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae899a

Journal ref: The Astronomical Journal, 172, 131 (2026)

DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ae899a

Code: https://github.com/JiangYuTS/BWFields

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The gist: Molecular bubbles are widely used as tracers of stellar feedback; yet, their identification in spectral-line surveys remains challenging because both cavity morphology and kinematic structure must be

Terminology

Abstract

Molecular bubbles are widely used as tracers of stellar feedback; yet, their identification in spectral-line surveys remains challenging because both cavity morphology and kinematic structure must be assessed consistently in position--position--velocity (PPV) space. We present the Bubble-Weight Fields (BWFields) framework, a PPV-based method that for the first time enables the automated and objective identification and analysis of enclosed molecular bubbles directly from spectral-line data cubes. BWFields constructs a bubble-weight field, W l,b,v, which encodes cumulative evidence for cavity interiors by aggregating topological signatures across multiple signal-to-noise tiers and velocity-integration scales. Contiguous cavity interiors are segmented as weight-clumps and associated with surrounding molecular gas, linking candidate bubbles to the structure of their host clouds. Shell morphology is characterized using radial intensity profiles and emission-defined intensity skeletons, which capture the shell geometry as traced by the observed emission. Bubble kinematics are quantified using azimuthally sampled position-velocity (PV) diagnostics, along with a turbulence-normalized expansion significance, which serves as a direct measure of the expansion-like velocity organisation. Applied to MWISP 13 CO observations of the G17 region, BWFields identifies a population of bubble candidates with a broad range of morphologies and velocity structures in complex environments. BWFields establishes a scalable and physically interpretable framework for molecular-bubble studies in large surveys, enabling systematic investigations of stellar feedback in the Galactic interstellar medium.

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