Molecular Hydrogen in Infrared Cirrus

Abstract

We combine data from our recent FUSE survey of interstellar molecular hydrogen absorption toward 50 high-latitude AGN with COBE-corrected IRAS 100 micron emission maps to study the correlation of infrared cirrus with H2. A plot of the H2 column density vs. IR cirrus intensity shows the same transition in molecular fraction, f_H2, as seen with total hydrogen column density, N_H. This transition is usually attributed to H2 self-shielding, and it suggests that many diffuse cirrus clouds contain H2 in significant fractions, f_H2 = 1-30%. These clouds cover approximately 50% of the northern sky at latitudes b > 30 degrees, at temperature-corrected 100 micron intensities D_100 > 1.5 MJy/sr. The sheetlike cirrus clouds, with hydrogen densities n_H > 30 cm^-3, may be compressed by dynamical processes at the disk-halo interface, and they are conducive to H2 formation on grain surfaces. Exploiting the correlation between N(H2) and 100 micron intensity, we estimate that cirrus clouds at b > 30 contain approximately 3000 M_sun in H2. Extrapolated over the inner Milky Way, the cirrus may contain 10^7 M_sun of H2 and 10^8 M_sun in total gas mass. If elevated to 100 pc, their gravitational potential energy is ~10^53 erg.