MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

Preprint 24 November 2016

Compiled using MNRAS LATEX style file v3.0

A closer look at the characteristic width of molecular

cloud filaments
G. V. Panopoulou,1,2? I. Psaradaki,1 R. Skalidis,

1 Department

arXiv:1611.07532v1 [astro-ph.GA] 22 Nov 2016

2 Foundation

K. Tassis,1,2 J. J. Andrews2

of Physics and ITCP, University of Crete, 71003, Heraklion, Greece

for Research and Technology - Hellas, IESL, Voutes, 71110 Heraklion, Greece

Accepted 2016 November 22. Received 2016 November 22; in original form 2016 September 13

ABSTRACT

Filaments in Herschel molecular cloud images are found to exhibit a characteristic

width. This finding is in tension with spatial power spectra of the data, which show
no indication of this characteristic scale. We demonstrate that this discrepancy is a
result of the methodology adopted for measuring filament widths. First, we perform
the previously used analysis technique on artificial scale-free data, and obtain a peaked
width distribution of filament-like structures. Next, we repeat the analysis on three
Herschel maps and reproduce the narrow distribution of widths found in previous
studies when considering the average width of each filament. However, the distribution of widths measured at all points along a filament spine is broader than the
distribution of mean filament widths, indicating that the narrow spread (interpreted
as a characteristic width) results from averaging. Furthermore, the width is found
to vary significantly from one end of a filament to the other. Therefore, the previously
identified peak at 0.1 pc cannot be understood as representing the typical width of
filaments. We find an alternative explanation by modelling the observed width distribution as a truncated power-law distribution, sampled with uncertainties. The position
of the peak is connected to the lower truncation scale and is likely set by the choice
of parameters used in measuring filament widths. We conclude that a characteristic
width of filaments is not supported by the available data.
Key words: ISM: structure ISM: clouds stars: formation submillimetre: ISM
methods: statistical ISM: individual objects: Polaris Flare, Aquila Rift, IC 5146

INTRODUCTION

Studies of the structure of molecular clouds can provide clues

on how gas accumulates to form stars. Gas in molecular
clouds is found to be ordered in filamentary structures, a result highlighted especially by Herschel observations of dust
emission in nearby clouds (Andre et al. 2010). Dense, selfgravitating filaments are often found to be co-spatial with
young stars and dense prestellar cores (e.g. Hartmann 2002;
Andre et al. 2010; Polychroni et al. 2013; K
onyves et al.
2015), and hence may be important for understanding star
formation.
One of the most striking results from analyses of Herschel data is that filaments in the Gould Belt clouds are
found to exhibit a narrow distribution of average crosssectional widths1 (Arzoumanian et al. 2011). This sharply

peaked distribution (with a mean at 0.1 pc and with

70% of values within 0.060.14 pc, Arzoumanian et al. 2011;
Koch & Rosolowsky 2015) contains filaments spanning more
than two orders of magnitude in column density.
This finding seems to contradict the expectation that filaments should contract (due to gravity) and hence increase
in density while decreasing in radius. Though the existence
of this characteristic scale is still poorly understood, it has
been suggested that it must be connected to some physical mechanism, perhaps one involved in filament formation
(Arzoumanian et al. 2011; Andre et al. 2014). Qualitative
arguments have connected this characteristic scale to the
transition from supersonic to trans-sonic turbulence (Arzoumanian et al. 2011) and to the ambipolar diffusion length
scale (for both gravitationally unbound and bound structures Hennebelle 2013; Hennebelle & Andre 2013). Simple
analytical models propose that the independence of filament

E-mail: panopg@physics.uoc.gr
Institute for Theoretical and Computational Physics, formerly
Institute for Plasma Physics
1 Throughout this paper the term width refers to the FWHM of
c 2016 The Authors

a Gaussian fit to the inner-most part of a filament radial profile,

the same definition used by Arzoumanian et al. (2011).

G. V. Panopoulou et al.

width from column density may be a result of the balance between accretion onto the (self-gravitating) filaments and dissipation of the turbulence within them (Hennebelle & Andre
2013; Heitsch 2013). Fischera & Martin (2012) offered pressure confinement of isothermal cylinders as a possible model
for self-gravitating filaments. Most recently, Auddy, Basu
& Kudoh (2016) proposed a model in which filaments are
magnetic ribbons, produced by large-scale, trans-Alfvenic
turbulent flows in a strong magnetic field. Their model is
able to reproduce average widths that vary within a factor of
two across two orders of magnitude in column density. However, simulations which either include self-gravity and neglect magnetic fields or vice versa have yet to reproduce the
observed distribution and independence on column density
(Smith, Glover & Klessen 2014; Ntormousi et al. 2016). Federrath (2016) simulated isothermal, self-gravitating, magnetized clouds with super-Alfvenic driven turbulence. His finding is that filament widths are peaked at 0.1 pc and appear
constant for one order of magnitude in column density, when
turbulence is operating. The proposed explanation is that
the characteristic width is set by the dissipation of turbulence in shocks. His model, however, fails to reproduce the
correlation between filament and magnetic field orientations
found in molecular clouds with Planck (Planck Collaboration Int. XXXV 2016).
One particularly puzzling observation regarding the apparent characteristic width of filaments is the absence of its
imprint on the spatial power spectra of Herschel cloud images (Miville-Deschenes et al. 2016). The spatial power spectrum of the 250 m map of the translucent non-star-forming
Polaris Flare is well fit by a power law from 2 pc to 0.02
pc (Miville-Deschenes et al. 2010). At the same time, the distribution of filament widths in this cloud is found to have a
prominent peak at 0.05 0.07 pc (Arzoumanian et al. 2011;
Panopoulou, Psaradaki & Tassis 2016). A similar situation
is found in the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex, where
filament widths are peaked around 0.12 pc with a spread of
0.04 pc (Alves de Oliveira et al. 2014). However, these authors find no indication of a typical filament width in the
-variance spectra (Stutzki et al. 1998) of the clouds, even
though the signature of cores and clumps is easily identified
as a change in the slope of the -variance spectrum at the
corresponding size scales.
Motivated by this apparent discrepancy, in this work
we retrace the steps in the analyses of filament width distributions. In section 2, we briefly describe the analysis used
for constructing the distribution of filament widths. We first
perform this analysis on an artificial filamentary image with
no characteristic scale and find the distribution of widths to
have a broad peak (section 3.1). We then repeat the analysis
on Herschel data of three clouds (the Polaris Flare, Aquila
and IC 5146, section 3.2), showing that the narrow spread of
the distribution of widths found in previous studies is likely
a consequence of averaging along filaments. The constancy
of filament widths may therefore not be inferred from this
spread. Furthermore, we investigate the position of the peak
of the distribution of widths and find that it is likely a result of the choice of range within which the filament width
has been measured (section 3.3). Finally, we summarize our
results in section 4.

METHODS

In order to reproduce the distributions of filament widths

for the three clouds presented in Arzoumanian et al. (2011)
(the Polaris Flare, Aquila, and IC 5146), we follow an analysis similar to their study. We use primarily the Herschel
Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) maps
of these clouds at 250 m, unless explicitly stated otherwise
in the text.
First, we employ the Discrete Persistent Structures Extractor (DISPERSE, Sousbie 2011), to identify the filamentary structures in each image. DISPERSE analyses the topology of a given map and extracts its skeleton, which corresponds to the ridges of elongated structures. We select the
parameters of DISPERSE so that the resulting skeletons are
visually similar to those shown in the previous studies of the
three clouds (Arzoumanian et al. 2011, IC 5146, figure 3),
(K
onyves et al. 2015, Aquila, figure 3), (Andre et al. 2014,
Polaris Flare, figure 1). The values of the parameters used
are given in appendix A.
Next, we provide the skeleton of DISPERSE and the corresponding Herschel image of each cloud as input to the
Filament Trait-Evaluated Reconstruction (FILTER) code2
(Panopoulou et al. 2014). The objective of FILTER is twofold:
First, it post-processes the skeleton of DISPERSE to only include continuous, non-spurious, structures (e.g. peaked well
above the noise level). This is done by taking cross-sections
at every pixel along the filament ridge and assessing each
intensity profile. Profiles that are not peaked around the filament ridge and above the noise-level are rejected. Second,
FILTER measures the width of each intensity profile along a
filament. The width is defined as the FWHM of a Gaussian
fit (with offset) to the inner-most part of the profile (as in
Arzoumanian et al. 2011). In order to find this value automatically for every profile, Gaussians are fit iteratively to
smaller and smaller distances from the filament ridge. The
initial range used for fitting is a free parameter of the algorithm. As has been shown by Smith, Glover & Klessen
(2014), the distance up to which a Gaussian is fit is crucial in the determination of the width, as at larger distances
the fit tends to miss the inner-most part of the profile. In
each section we shall state explicitly which starting value
for the fitting range has been used. At the end of the iteration, the most frequent FWHM is assigned as the width
of the profile, after deconvolution from the beam size3 . The
deconvolvedwidth is found (as in K
onyves et al. 2015) by
FWHMd = FWHM2 HPBW2 , where HPBW is the halfpower beam width of the map (1800 for 250 m, which corresponds to 0.013 pc, 0.023 pc, and 0.04 pc at the assumed
distances to the Polaris Flare, 150 pc, Aquila, 260 pc, and
IC 5146, 460 pc, respectively). Finally, only sufficiently elongated structures (with at least a 3:1 length to mean width
ratio) are included in the final sample of filaments that we
consider for further analysis. The post-processed skeletons
of the three Herschel images used in this work are shown in
appendix A.

The code is available at: https://bitbucket.org/ginpan/filter

The most frequent FWHM has been found through tests (on
data and artificial images) during code development to be a robust
estimator of the width.
3

MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

FILTER provides two different ways of constructing
width distributions:
i. A distribution of the FWHM measured at all points
along the spines of filaments can be created. Information
on the structure to which each measurement belongs is discarded in this way (e.g. Panopoulou, Psaradaki & Tassis
2016). We refer to this kind of distribution as the distribution of all profile widths.
ii. A distribution of the mean FWHM of filaments can be
constructed. This second type of distribution has been found
to show a characteristic width in previous studies (e.g. Arzoumanian et al. 2011). We refer to this type of distribution
as the distribution of filament-averaged widths (or of mean
filament widths).
With FILTER the mean width of each filament is found
by taking the average value of the FWHM measured at
each point (pixel) along the filament ridge. In other studies, the mean width has been found by fitting a Gaussian
to the mean filament profile e.g. Arzoumanian et al. (2011);
Koch & Rosolowsky (2015); Smith, Glover & Klessen (2014);
Benedettini et al. (2015). In the work of Koch & Rosolowsky
(2015), a non-parametric width determination is also used
when Gaussian fitting is not possible. In the following analysis we find the mean width of a filament by averaging the
FWHM of all its profiles, as this process is automated, objective, and easily reproducible. We note that the method used
to calculate the average width of a filament should not affect
the statistical properties of the distribution of mean filament
widths (mean and spread), as long as a large number of filaments is used. Indeed, the difference between our approach
of measuring mean filament widths and that of other studies
does not affect the properties of the distributions of mean
filament widths, as both the mean and spread are in good
agreement with those of Arzoumanian et al. (2011) (section
3.2).

3
3.1

RESULTS
Can a peaked size distribution arise from
scale-free data?

The scale-free spatial power spectrum of the Herschel Polaris Flare image (at 250 m) is in tension with the existence
of a characteristic width of the filaments in the same image
(Miville-Deschenes et al. 2010; Arzoumanian et al. 2011). It
may be argued that in some circumstances, the imprint of
a characteristic scale on the spatial power spectrum is hidden. We use simple artificial images to explore if such a
situation may arise, in appendix B. We demonstrate that
if structures with a characteristic scale are introduced, an
imprint of this scale is apparent in the spatial power spectrum as long as the structures are easily discernible from
background noise, as is the case for filaments in the Polaris
Flare.
In this section we explore the opposite situation:
whether a preferred scale can arise from analysing an image
with a scale-free spatial power spectrum. To this end, we
create a scale-free image and perform the analysis described
in section 2.
To construct the image we use the Ridged Multifractal model from the suite of noise-synthesis
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

models implemented in the python library pynoise

(http://pynoise.readthedocs.io). Noise synthesis models (Musgrave, Kolb & Mace 1989) are used for creating
natural-looking complex and heterogenous patterns (landscapes, clouds). They are based on the widely used,
scale-free, fractional-Brownian-motion (fBm) (e.g. Stutzki
et al. 1998) but use band-limited Perlin noise (Perlin 1985)
functions for the basis function instead of sine waves as in
pure fBm.
The resulting image (256 pixels on each side) is filamentary, as can be seen in Fig. 1 (left). We adjusted the
parameters of the model to obtain an image whose spatial
(azimuthally-averaged) power spectrum has the form of a
power law (Fig. 1 - top right). The one dimensional spatial
power spectrum is constructed as in Pingel et al. (2013),
by taking the median power in concentric annuli around the
zero-frequency pixel in the two-dimensional power spectrum.
The annuli are chosen so that a uniform sampling of scales in
logarithmic space is obtained. The sample size ranges from
29 (for the smallest annulus) to 23000 values. The errors
on the median value (comparable to the size of the points in
the figure) are calculated by bootstrap resampling. For every
annulus, we resample the distribution of intensities and calculate the median of the resampled distribution 100 times.
The error on the median is the standard deviation of these
100 median values.
We performed the analysis described in section 2 on
the artificial image. The resulting skeletons of filament-like
structures (having at least a 3:1 aspect ratio) are overplotted
in the left panel of Fig. 1. The distribution of widths measured at each point along these elongated structures (first
method) is shown in the bottom right panel of Fig. 1. The
initial fitting range used is 10 pixels from the ridge (see
discussion in section 2 regarding the fitting range). The distribution is clearly peaked around 12 pixels, and has a spread
of 3.8 pixels.
The existence of a peak in the distribution of widths
of the structures extracted by DISPERSE in this image is
inconsistent with its scale-free (power-law) spatial power
spectrum. Since the construction of the power spectrum is
straight-forward, we conclude that the existence of the preferred scale (peak of the width distribution) is most likely
an artefact of the analysis of apparent filament widths.
3.2

Why is the distribution of widths narrow?

We now turn to the Herschel data of the Polaris Flare,

Aquila, and IC 5146. When combining width measurements
of filaments in these clouds, Arzoumanian et al. (2011) find
a distribution of mean filament widths with a spread of only
0.03 pc. It is this small spread that seems to imply that filaments have a characteristic width. In this section, we attempt to understand why the distribution of widths is found
to have such a narrow spread.
We follow the analysis of section 2 on the Herschel
SPIRE-250 m map of each cloud. We construct the distribution of widths measured at every cross-section (profile)
of the filaments in the map. Studies finding a characteristic
width have used the width of the mean profile of individual filaments to create the distribution of (mean filament)
widths (e.g. by fitting a Gaussian to the mean filament profile, Arzoumanian et al. 2011). For comparison, we also con-

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G. V. Panopoulou et al.

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Figure 1. Left: Image generated using Ridged Multifractal Noise (256 pixels on each side), with the skeleton of filaments having an
aspect ratio of at least 3:1 overplotted. Top right: Spatial (azimuthally-averaged) power spectrum of image on left (open circles) and
linear fit in log-log space (dashed line). Corner inset: Residual of the fit, R = log(median power) - log(fit). Bottom right: Distribution of
the widths measured at each point along the ridges of the filaments in the artificial image on the left.

Table 1. Properties of width distributions shown in Fig. 2. Includes the number of filaments in each distribution, Nf il , the
number of profiles of all filaments, Npr , the mean and standard deviation of the distribution of filament-averaged widths
(hWmean i and mean ), and those of the distribution of all profile
widths (hWall i, all ).
Cloud

Nf il

Npr

hWmean i
(pc)

hWall i
(pc)

mean
(pc)

all
(pc)

Polaris

100

24969

0.095

0.097

0.014

0.05

Aquila

79

14315

0.095

0.094

0.02

0.04

IC 5146

58

5277

0.11

0.11

0.02

0.04

All

237

44561

0.09

0.09

0.02

0.04

struct the distribution of mean filament widths (as explained

in section 2).
In Fig. 2 we show the normalized distribution of
filament-averaged widths (dotted) and that of all profile
widths (solid), for each of the clouds mentioned above. The
number of filaments used to create these distributions as
well as the mean and spread of the distributions are shown
in Table 1. The initial fitting range used for all distributions
was 0.1 pc from the filament ridge. We find that the mean
and spread of the distribution of mean filament widths for
the filaments in IC 5146, and for those in all three clouds
combined are in agreement with those found by Arzoumanian et al. (2011) (the reported mean and spread were 0.1
pc and 0.03 pc, respectively).
When comparing the distribution of all filament profiles to that of mean widths we find that the shapes of the
two kinds of distribution are clearly different. The filament-

averaged width distribution is much more concentrated

around its mean value (all [2 3] mean , from Table 1), and lacks the tails seen in the width distribution of
all profiles. The same effect is seen when filaments from all
clouds are combined in a single distribution (bottom panel,
Fig. 2).
The differences between the two kinds of distributions
can be easily understood considering the Central Limit Theorem (CLT). The average value of a sample of profile widths
(filament) is expected to follow a Gaussian distribution, provided there is a sufficient number of filaments and that
widths are not strongly correlated within a filament. This
distribution of averages is centred around the mean of the
parent distribution (that containing the widths of all filament profiles). It is therefore not surprising that the spread
in the distribution of filament-averaged widths is small. The
information conveyed by the narrowness of this distribution
is simply that the mean width of filaments is known with very
good accuracy; not that the widths of individual filaments are
constant, as has often been interpreted.
We now wish to understand the factors that determine
the spread of the distribution of mean filament widths (i.e.
we wish to find the parameters P that enter in mean =
f (P )). From the original form of the CLT (which assumes
measurements are completely uncorrelated), we expect that

mean = all / N ,

(1)

if all filaments have the same number of profiles N (which is

proportional to the filament length). However, the lengths of
filaments follow a distribution of values g(N ), and therefore
we expect mean = f (all , g(N )).
In order to test whether these two parameters are sufficient to explain the observed mean in the Polaris Flare,
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

1.0
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what is observed (see grey dashed distribution at the top

panel of Fig. 2).
The information that is lacking is that widths within
the telescope beam size are strongly correlated. We provide
evidence for this by constructing the Autocorrelation Function of widths along the ridge of filaments, in appendix C.
By performing a simulation similar to that described above,
including this final piece of information, we are able to reproduce the observed spread of the distribution of mean widths
(mean = 0.011 pc, see appendix C). Therefore, the parameters that most significantly affect mean can be summarized
as: mean = f (all , g(N ), beam). In other words, there is
no other information to be extracted from the spread of the
filament-averaged width distribution.
Since the structure of individual filaments cannot be
inferred uniquely from their average properties, we must examine how much does the width throughout an entire filament vary. This question can be answered by considering
the standard deviation of all widths measured at different
positions along the spine of a filament. Individual filaments
are known to exhibit a range of FWHM along their spines
(0.1 1 pc, 0.07 0.2 pc, 0.1 2.5 pc Juvela et al. 2012; Malinen et al. 2012; Andre et al. 2016). In the Polaris Flare, the
standard deviation of profile widths in a given filament is on
average hf il i = 0.04 pc. This value is similar to the spread
of the parent width distribution (all = 0.05 pc, Table 1).
Therefore, the width varies significantly throughout the entire extent (length) of an individual filament. This finding
is also supported by the two-dimensional distribution of filament widths across the Polaris Flare map, presented in
Panopoulou, Psaradaki & Tassis (2016) their figure 7.
Filament widths do not exhibit large-scale regularities, but
rather fluctuate in a seemingly random manner throughout
the cloud.

0.2
0.0
0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

FWHM (pc)

Figure 2. Comparison of filament-averaged (dotted) and nonaveraged (solid black) width distributions for the three different
clouds (top 3 plots), and for all filaments in the three clouds
combined (bottom). All FWHM have been deconvolved from the
beam size. The grey dashed line (top panel) shows the distribution of mean filament widths resulting from the Monte Carlo
simulation described in the text (section 3.2).

we attempt to reproduce the distribution of mean filament

widths from that of all profile widths as follows. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation where samples of widths
are drawn randomly from the observed distribution of all
profile widths. These samples are randomly assigned to 100
groups (or fake filaments), corresponding to the 100 filaments found in the Polaris Flare. The size of each group
(corresponding to the length of the filament) is drawn from
the observed distribution of filament lengths. We then calculate the average width of each group and construct the distribution of group-averaged widths. This process produces
rand
a distribution with mean
= 0.004 pc, much narrower than
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

3.3

Why is the peak of the distribution of

filament widths at 0.1 pc?

The findings of section 3.2 along with the scale-free power

spectrum of the Polaris Flare, render the existence of a characteristic width of filaments highly unlikely. Consequently,
the previously reported peak of the filament-averaged width
distribution at 0.1 pc cannot be explained by such a view.
In order to understand the origin and position of this
peak, we examine in detail the width distribution of all filament profiles in the Polaris Flare. Fig. 3 shows the distribution of log(width) with equally-sized bins in logarithmic
space. It is strongly peaked and the mean and median values (vertical solid and dotted lines, respectively) differ by
only 5 103 pc. Interestingly, the part of the distribution
at scales larger than the mean resembles a straight line (in
logarithmic space). A linear fit (in log-log space) to the distribution is shown with a grey solid line in Fig. 3.
This resemblance of part of the distribution to a powerlaw is not surprising if we consider the evidence for scalefree, or self-similar, structures in the ISM within a range of
scales (e.g. Stutzki et al. 1998; Elmegreen & Scalo 2004;
Tassis 2007; Elia et al. 2014; Miville-Deschenes et al. 2016).
Elmegreen & Falgarone (1996) find size and mass distributions in clouds consistent with those arising from a fractal.
In the case of the Polaris Flare, the scale-free nature of the
cloud is evidenced by its power-law spatial power spectrum

G. V. Panopoulou et al.

3.5
slope = -5
0.15

2.5

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hW i (pc)

Log number of profiles

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1.0

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0.03

0.0

2.0

1.5

1.0

Log FWHM (pc)

0.5

0.0

Figure 3. Distribution of the logarithm of all profile widths of

filaments in the Polaris Flare. At scales larger than 0.15 pc, the
distribution resembles a power law (the grey solid line is a linear
fit in log-log space to the logarithmically-spaced bins). The mean
and median of the distribution are shown by the vertical solid and
dotted lines, respectively. The Herschel-SPIRE beam size (at 250
m) at the distance of the Polaris Flare (150 pc) is shown with
the dashed vertical line.

(Miville-Deschenes et al. 2010). We note that because the

Polaris Flare is gravitationally unbound and is not forming
stars (Heithausen 2002; Ward-Thompson et al. 2010; Wagle
et al. 2015), self-similarity is not expected to break down at
the typical scale of prestellar cores (0.1 pc, e.g. Goodman
et al. 1998). Therefore, a power-law distribution of filament
widths (in accordance to other length scales) within some
range of scales, is not unreasonable.
If a power law size (width) distribution is intrinsic to
the cloud, we expect that this power law will be truncated
at large scales at a fraction of the size of the Herschel map
and at small scales (at least) by the resolution. In the process
of imaging the cloud dust emission and measuring sizes on
the map, errors are introduced. Errors have the effect of
smoothing the distribution near the lower truncation limit
(Koen & Kondlo 2009). If these errors are assumed Gaussian,
then the shape of the (truncated) power law distribution
can be analytically modelled (Koen & Kondlo 2009) and is
similar to that of the distribution in Fig. 3: it possesses a
peak near the lower truncation limit followed by a power
law tail. The analytical form of the distribution of measured
widths (W ) is:


Z Wmax
1 W w 2
w(+1)

exp

(
)
dw,
f (W ) =

2(Wmin
Wmax
)
Wmin
(2)
where w is the width before introducing measurement errors,
is the measurement uncertainty, + 1 is the power law
slope, and Wmin , Wmax are the sizes at which the power law
is truncated due to (at least) the resolution and (at most)
the map size. For what follows, we will consider only non-

2
3
4
5

0.00
0.00

0.02

0.04
0.06
Wmin (pc)

0.08

0.10

Figure 4. Dependence of the mean measured width of profiles on

Wmin for different values of (ranging from 2 to 5 and marked
with labelled lines). Values of Wmax = 5 pc and = 0.02 pc were
used, since there is little dependence of hW i on these parameters
(see text). A 11 correlation is shown with the dashed grey line.
The dashed vertical line shows the Herschel-SPIRE beam size (at
250 m) in parsecs at the distance to the Polaris Flare (150 pc).

negative values of . The average value can be obtained by

(numerical) integration of the formula:
Z map size
hW i =
f (W )W dW,
(3)
HPBW

where the integration is performed within the bounds set by

the observations (resolution limit and map size).
Therefore, if one could determine the parameters ,
, Wmin , and Wmax , a prediction for the mean of the distribution of all profile widths could be obtained. In section
3.2 we found that the mean of the distribution of all profile widths is coincident with the position of the peak of the
filament-averaged distribution (as a result of the CLT). Consequently, measuring the mean of the former kind of distribution determines the peak of the latter. We note that the mean
and peak of the distribution of filament-averaged widths are
the same, as it is (approximately) Gaussian.
In Fig. 4 we explore the dependence of hW i on the
parameters Wmin and . hW i is plotted against Wmin for
Wmax = 5 pc, = 0.02 pc, and different values of (ranging from 25, around a value of 4 implied by the slope of
Fig. 3, and marked with solid and dotted lines). We find
that there is no dependence of hW i on Wmax . For in the
range 25, constant Wmin and , and Wmax in the range
1 50 pc, hW i varies by less than 0.01 pc. Similarly, for constant Wmin and Wmax , and in the range 0.010.1 pc, hW i
varies by less than 0.02 pc for any given within 25. On
the contrary, hW i is very sensitive to the parameter Wmin .
Therefore, the lower scale at which a power law width distribution is truncated essentially sets the position of the peak
in the distribution of filament-averaged widths.
We would like to identify the best fit parameters for the
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

4.

25
0.

15
0.

25

0.

05

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

(pc)

4
0.

07

2
07
0.

25
4.

00
4.

03
0.

03
0.

0.

03

0.

Wmin (pc)
0.
07
07
2
4

4.

00

FWHM (pc)

Wmin (pc)

Figure 5. The posterior distribution of parameters from our

MCMC model of the data of Fig. 3. Blue lines show the values returned by the MLE. On diagonal: One-dimensional histograms of
model parameters: , , and Wmin . Lower diagonal: Joint PDFs
of the posterior distribution of the model parameters. Top right:
comparison between normalized distribution of Fig. 3 (stepped
histogram) with our model (equation 2), using a randomly selected set of parameter values from the posterior distribution of
model parameters (smooth line).

distribution of filament widths in the Polaris Flare, using a

power law with measurement uncertainties. Koen & Kondlo
(2009) provide the log-likelihood function for this model:
L=

log 2 N log + N log N log(Wmin

Wmax
)
2
"
#


Z
N
2
Wmax
X
1 Wj x
+
log
x(+1) exp
dx
2

Wmin
j=1
(4)

where Wj are the N different filament width measurements

and is the Gaussian standard deviation on measurements
of Wj (and is independent from Wj ). Since, for the distributions of filament widths, the effect of Wmax is insignificant,
we set it to 10 pc (approximate size of the Herschel map)
and solve for the best-fit values of Wmin , , and the measurement uncertainty, . We use the routine minimize within the
scipy.optimize package, to find the values that maximize
the log-likelihood. The resulting values for the parameters
are: = 0.036 pc, = 4.07, and Wmin = 0.074 pc. We note
that the slope found by fitting a line to the distribution in
Fig. 3 (slope = 5) is in good agreement with the value found
by maximizing the log-likelihood ( + 1 = 5.07). By substituting and Wmin in equation 3, we obtain hW i = 0.098 pc,
which is approximately equal to the mean of the observed
distribution of widths.
Additionally, we would like to determine the range of
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

parameter values implied by the filament width data. Instead of using a maximum likelihood estimate (MLE), we
use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm emcee (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013). emcee employs an affineinvariant ensemble sampler to probe the model parameter
space. Our model uses 32 walkers to maximize the loglikelihood function in Equation 4. We apply flat priors on
Wmin and , in the ranges: Wmin : [00.5] pc, : [0.0110].
We use the Jeffreys prior (1/) on to make it scaleinvariant. The range used for is [03] pc. We note that
encapsulates the uncertainty introduced by two different
processes: the imaging of the cloud (resolution) and the measurement of the width (analysis in section 2). We therefore
choose to leave as a free parameter (and do not set it equal
to the image resolution) to account for both sources of error. 200 steps are sufficient for the burn-in stage. We throw
these data away, and run our model for 2000 additional steps
to produce the posterior distribution.
The posterior distributions of model parameters (Fig.
5 on diagonal) are strongly peaked, with standard deviations of 3 104 pc for , 0.07 for , and 4 104 pc for
Wmin . Joint PDFs of the posterior distributions of model
parameters are shown in the panels lower than the diagonal. As expected for uniform priors (and since our prior on
is weak), the region of high probability parameter space
agrees with the results from the maximum likelihood estimate (blue lines). The top right panel in Fig. 5 compares
the distribution of filament widths from Fig. 3 (histogram)
to the functional form of equation 2 with values for the parameters drawn randomly from the posterior distribution of
model parameters (smooth line). For the range of parameters used, the shape of the smooth curve varies very little
(the variation is similar to the width of the plotted line).
The model captures well the basic shape of the distribution
and of the model parameter space.
For values of the parameters within 5 of the mean of
their corresponding distributions, we obtain from equation
3: hW i = 0.09 0.1 pc. We conclude that the model used
here accurately reproduces the position of the peak of the
distribution of widths of Fig. 3 (within 0.01 pc). From the
value of we obtain a handle on the error introduced by
the width calculation algorithm. Since the resolution is only
0.013 pc, the algorithm is the main source of measurement
error.
The question that remains to be answered is what determines Wmin , the value below which the power law distribution is truncated. One obvious culprit could be the resolution
limit. However, if Wmin were equal to the telescope beam
size (0.013 pc, shown by the vertical dashed line in Fig.
4), the mean of the distribution would fall below 0.03 pc,
as seen from Fig. 4. Another possibility would be that the
combined effect of the telescope resolution and the errors
of the width-measurement algorithm are setting the lower
limit. This corresponds to the parameter which is almost
3 times the beam size (for the distribution of widths in Fig.
3). Wmin , however, is found to be almost 6 times the beam
size, making both options unlikely.
A more likely possibility is that Wmin is related to the
range over which the Gaussian fit is performed to measure
the width of a profile. In order to avoid fitting the wings of
filament profiles, studies of filament widths have chosen to
fit a Gaussian within a range of 0.1 to 0.4 pc from the

G. V. Panopoulou et al.

Table 2. Values of the parameters returned by the MLE for distributions with different initial fitting ranges. The final column
shows the values derived from the parameters using equation 3.
Fitting range
(pc)

(pc)

Wmin
(pc)

hW i
(pc)

0.04

0.012

4.65

0.037

0.05

0.06

0.019

3.97

0.049

0.07

0.08

0.027

4.13

0.064

0.08

0.10

0.036

4.07

0.074

0.10

0.12

0.043

4.25

0.087

0.11

0.14

0.051

4.16

0.094

0.12

0.20

0.065

3.24

0.110

0.16

0.25

0.079

3.03

0.125

0.19

fitting range (pc)

0.10
0.15
0.20

0.25
0.20
0.15
0.10
0.05

hW i (pc)

0.20
0.15
0.10
0.05

Number of profiles

0.00
2500

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

Wmin (pc)

0.05

0.35

0.04 pc
0.06 pc
0.08 pc
0.1 pc
0.12 pc
0.14 pc
0.2 pc
0.25 pc

2000
1500
1000
500
0
0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

ent initial fitting ranges, and repeating the MLE analysis for
each one. The resulting values of the parameters are listed
in Table 2. As can be seen in Fig. 6, the peak of the distribution of widths shifts towards lower values for smaller fitting
ranges (vertical line segments on the top of the main panel).
From the top panel of Fig. 6 (left vertical axis), we find that
the mean of the observed distributions (open circles) is in
very good agreement with the mean calculated with equation
3 using the values of Table 2 (black crosses). Both quantities increase monotonically with the fitting range. This is
because Wmin also has such a dependence on the fitting
range (Fig. 6 top panel, right vertical axis). Since the fitting range used in previous studies does not vary much, it is
not surprising that the peak of the filament-averaged width
distribution is found at similar values for different clouds.
Compared to the simulations of Smith, Glover &
Klessen (2014), the mean width of filaments in the Polaris
Flare increases slightly more abruptly as a function of fitting range. For a factor of 3 increase in fitting range, these
authors find the mean width to increase by a factor of 1.5,
whereas we find a factor of 2. However, any such comparison must consider the range that we use as an upper
limit, because we fit Gaussians iteratively beginning from
the quoted fitting range. Also, there is an indication in Fig.
6 that at larger ranges the slope tends to flatten out. Considering these factors, we find the scaling of mean width
with fitting range to be strikingly similar between the simulated and observed filaments, perhaps hinting at common
structural properties.
The dependence of the mean width on the fitting
range suggests that selecting a scale over which to observe/measure a structure determines how important the
inner-most part of the structure will appear4 . In the case
of a scale-free structure this can be understood, as a fractal surface changes in character when examined at different scales: it appears smoother/flatter when observed from
further away, but upon closer inspection substructure appears. Alternatively, for a structure with a well-defined peak,
a Gaussian fit with offset will always return a narrower
FWHM for a smaller fitting range.

0.35

FWHM (pc)

Figure 6. Top: the mean of the observed distributions (open circles) and that calculated from equation 3 (crosses) with the MLE
values of the parameters, versus the fitting range (left vertical
axis). Values of Wmin returned by the MLE for each distribution as a function of fitting range are shown as grey crosses (right
vertical axis). Bottom: Distributions of beam-deconvolved profile
widths in the Polaris Flare for different values of initial fitting
range (distance from the axis of a filament). The vertical lines at
the top show the mean value of each distribution.

filament spine (Arzoumanian et al. 2011; Juvela et al. 2012;

Smith, Glover & Klessen 2014; Koch & Rosolowsky 2015;
Andre et al. 2016; Federrath 2016). However, Smith, Glover
& Klessen (2014) have shown that the selection of fitting
range drastically affects the mean filament width.
We investigate this effect further for the filaments in the
Polaris Flare, by creating distributions of widths with differ-

SUMMARY

In this work we have explored the analysis of filament widths

in an attempt to find a way to reconcile the proposed characteristic width of filaments with the absence of its imprint
in spatial power spectra. Our findings can be summarized in
the following points:
i. The selected methodology for measuring widths can
produce a peaked distribution even if the original data do
not contain a preferred scale.
ii. The process of averaging over filament profiles results
in a distribution that is necessarily narrow, as a result of the
central limit theorem.
iii. Widths vary significantly as a function of position on
the spine of a filament.
4

Observational evidence for substructure in Herschel filaments (through finer resolution imaging) already exists, see e.g.
Fern
andez-L
opez et al. (2014); Henshaw et al. (2016, 2017).
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

iv. The position of the previously identified peak (0.1 pc) in
Herschel data could be determined by the choice of distance
from the filament spine within which the width is measured.
The above suggests that filaments are unlikely to have a constant width, a result which explains the lack of a characteristic scale in the spatial power spectrum of the Polaris Flare.
Finally, we note that our results are specific for the widths
of filaments and do not contradict the (well-established) existence of other typical length scales in clouds (Mouschovias
1991).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank Dmitriy Blinov, Vasiliki Pavlidou,
and Aris Tritsis for fruitful discussions as well as Vassilis
Charmandaris, Paul Goldsmith, Nick Kylafis, and Josh Peek
for their helpful comments on the paper. We are grateful to
the anonymous reviewer for a detailed report which greatly
improved this work. Also, we thank Monica He for her contribution during the first steps of this work and Damianos
Mylonakis for helping out with technical issues. We used the
python module corner (Foreman-Mackey 2016) to produce
Fig. 5. This research made use of Astropy, a communitydeveloped core Python package for Astronomy (Robitaille
et al. 2013). G.V.P. and K.T. acknowledge support by FP7
through the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant PCIGGA-2011-293531 SFOnset and partial support from the
EU FP7 Grant PIRSES-GA-2012-31578 EuroCal. J. J. A.
acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement n. 617001.
This research has used data from the Herschel
Gould Belt Survey (HGBS) project (http://gouldbeltherschel.cea.fr). The HGBS is a Herschel Key Programme jointly carried out by SPIRE Specialist Astronomy Group 3 (SAG 3), scientists of several institutes in
the PACS Consortium (CEA Saclay, INAF-IFSI Rome and
INAF- Arcetri, KU Leuven, MPIA Heidelberg), and scientists of the Herschel Science Center (HSC).

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APPENDIX A: DISPERSE SKELETONS OF

HERSCHEL IMAGES
As explained in section 2, the first step in the analysis of
filament widths is the identification of the filaments in the
image. This is done here by using DISPERSE (Sousbie 2011)
to acquire the skeleton of the image and then using FILTER
(Panopoulou et al. 2014) to post-process the skeleton and
discard spurious structures.
The (post-processed) skeletons of the three clouds (Polaris Flare, Aquila and IC 5146) used in our analysis are
shown in Figs. A1 A3 (coloured lines) overplotted on the
250 m Herschel images. Each line represents a single structure (filament). The parameters of DISPERSE for these skeletons are shown in table A1. The skeletons obtained are very

10

G. V. Panopoulou et al.

Table A1. Parameters of DISPERSE used for the skeletons of Fig.

A1 Fig. A3.
robustness
(MJy/sr)

smooth

assemble
(degrees)

Polaris Flare

15

16

50

60

Aquila

80

82

50

50

IC 5146 1
IC 5146 2
IC 5146 3

400
50
40

410
51
55

60
100
100

90
60
40

300

240
2

180
120

60

4
+28

60

40

279

278

32

+27

277

276

120

275

RA (J2000)

24
+26

16
8

+25

MJy/sr

Figure A2. Same as Fig. A1 but for the image of Aquila.

+24
126

125

124

123

122

121

350

16

300

Dec (J2000)

Galactic Longitude

Figure A1. Skeleton of the Polaris Flare 250 m Herschel image constructed with DISPERSE and post-processed with FILTER.
Coloured lines trace the spines of filaments used in our analysis.

250

+48

200
150
100
+47

50
0
329

similar to those of Arzoumanian et al. (2011); K

onyves et
al. (2015); Andre et al. (2014).
For the Polaris Flare and Aquila, DISPERSE was run directly on the entire (unfiltered) Herschel image. The skeleton for IC 5146 was produced by running DISPERSE on three
sub-maps (divided by grey lines in Fig. A3) and combining
the resulting skeletons. This enabled us to isolate regions
of similar intensity, as in the whole map the differences in
brightness caused either faint structures not to be identified
or spurious structures to be identified in the brightest parts.
In table A1, indices 1, 2, and 3 refer to the left, middle and
bottom regions of the map respectively.
We have performed a parameter study for the skeletons
of the image of Aquila to test for effects on the distribution of
filament profile widths. The ranges of parameters used (for
parameter definitions see Sousbie 2011) were: persistence 60
80 MJy/sr, robustness 82 102 MJy/sr, smoothing 50
200, and assembling of arcs 50 90 degrees. All resulting
distributions of profile widths were identical.

328

327

326

RA (J2000)

Figure A3. Same as Fig. A1 but for the image of IC 5146. The
grey lines divide the image into three submaps on which DISPERSE
was run separately.

APPENDIX B: CAN A CHARACTERISTIC

SCALE BE HIDDEN FROM THE POWER
SPECTRUM?
In this section we use simple artificial images to investigate
the effect of a characteristic scale on the azimuthally averaged spatial power spectrum of an image.
Our tests consist in creating elongated structures with
radial profiles following the form of a Plummer profile in
column density (a form which fits well the column density
profiles of observed filaments, Arzoumanian et al. 2011). The
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

MJy/sr

Galactic Latitude

MJy/sr

persistence
(MJy/sr)

Dec (J2000)

Cloud

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

x (pixels)
100
150

50

200

250

0.10

11

3.5

0.09

y (pixels)

0.07
100

0.06
0.05

150

0.04
0.03

200

0.02

3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5

log(median power)

0.08

Intensity (arbitrary units)

50

1.0

0.01
250

0.5

-0.5

0.2

5
4
3
2
0.0

1
0

0.1
log(Power)

fy (1/pixel)

-0.2

0.0

0.2

0.1

2
3

0.5
-0.5

-0.2

0.0

0.2

0.5

fx (1/pixel)

102

101

log(median power) - log(fit)

0.2
100

f (1/pixel)

Figure B1. Top left: two-dimensional pink noise that is used in subsequent images of artificial filaments. Bottom left: two-dimensional
spatial power spectrum of the image with annuli drawn to indicate the regions within which the azimuthally-averaged power spectrum
(top right) is calculated. Top right: Azimuthally averaged spatial power spectrum with errors and linear fit performed in log-log space
(dashed line). Bottom right: Difference between the (logarithms of the) spatial power spectrum and the fit.

intensity of the profile of an artificial filament is I0 on its

spine, has an inner flat portion (in logarithmic space) of
size Rflat , and drops with distance (r) from the axis of the
filament as:
I(r) =

I0
[1 + (r/Rflat )2 ]

p1
2

(B1)

For the exponent, p, we choose a value of p = 2, as observed

for filaments in Herschel data (Arzoumanian et al. 2011)
The artificial filaments have very simplistic characteristics: they are straight, have a constant peak intensity along
their spine, and a constant Rflat . This should make the identification of the signature of any characteristic scale (width,
length), in the spatial power spectrum, unambiguous. In this
section we use Rflat as a proxy of the width of the artificial
filaments as for profiles with p = 2, FWHM 3Rflat (Arzoumanian et al. 2011).
The filament images are co-added with (the same) twodimensional isotropic pink noise. We generate the noise by
creating the coefficients of its two-dimensional Fourier
p transform. Each coefficient Ck has a magnitude of 1/ kx2 + ky2
and a random phase (C0 is set to 0). We obtain the final pink
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

noise image by applying the inverse Fourier transform (Fig.

B1, top left). Its two-dimensional power spectrum is shown
in the bottom left panel. The azimuthally-averaged power
spectrum (constructed by taking the median power within
the annuli drawn on the two-dimensional power spectrum,
as in Pingel et al. 2013) has the form of a power-law (Fig.
B1, top right). The deviation from a perfect power-law can
be quantified by the residuals of the power spectrum from
a linear fit in log-log space (dashed line in top right panel).
From the bottom right panel of Fig. B1 we see that the level
of the residuals, log(median power) - log(fit), is less than
0.2. As in section 3.1, the error of the median of each annulus is quantified by bootstrap resampling the distribution of
intensities within the annulus.
Fig. B2 (left) shows a single filament that has Rflat = 8
pixels and is 80 pixels long. The spatial power spectrum
of the image (top right) has been fit by a line. The power
spectrum deviates significantly from this line at the spatial
frequencies corresponding to Rflat (dashed vertical line) and
the filaments length (dotted vertical line) as can be seen in
the bottom left panel of the figure.
In Fig. B3, we investigate the effect of changing the

G. V. Panopoulou et al.

7.2
6.4

50

4.0
150
3.2
2.4

200

1.6
250
0

50

100

150

200

250

x (pixels)

log(median power) - log(fit)

100

y (pixels)

Intensity (arbitrary units)

5.6
4.8

8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
102
log(median power)

12

101

100

f (1/pixel)

Figure B2. Left: Artificial image of a single filament with Rflat = 8 pixels and length = 80 pixels. Top right: spatial power spectrum of
the image with a linear fit in log-log space (dashed line). Bottom right: difference between the (logarithms of the) power spectrum and
fit. The dashed vertical line shows the spatial scale corresponding to the width Rflat , while the dotted line shows the scale corresponding
to the length. Low intensity pink noise (Fig B1) has been added to the image of the filament.

width (Rflat ) of this single filament. As Rflat changes from

8 (top) to 12 (middle) and finally to 16 (bottom) pixels,
the signature of this scale on the power spectrum moves to
the corresponding spatial frequencies (indicated by vertical
dashed lines).
Having identified the signature of a characteristic scale
on the power spectrum, we now investigate the circumstances under which it may be possible to hide such a
signature in a way that it does not appear in the power
spectrum. We first create a map with 10 filaments of the
same length (40 pixels) but with random orientations and
positions. Each filament has a different peak intensity and
Rflat (constant along its spine). The Rflat are drawn from the
narrow distribution of mean filament widths found in Fig.
2 (bottom panel). The values drawn from this distribution
were multiplied by 100 to obtain Rflat , meaning that a value
of 0.1 pc is mapped to 10 pixels (a scale that is well-sampled
in the power spectra of the artificial images). The image is
shown in Fig. B4, with each of the vertical dashed lines denoting the spatial frequency that corresponds to 1/Rflat for
the 10 filaments. Even when multiple filaments are present,
with random orientations and spacings between them, the
signatures of their characteristic scales are clearly visible as
deviations from the fit to the power spectrum. These deviations are significantly larger than those seen in the power
spectrum of the pink noise.
We investigate the statistical significance of this result
by creating 150 realizations of such images. We find that
in only 10% of the images, the maximum residual of the
fit is less than 0.2 in amplitude (in the range of frequencies
corresponding to the values of Rflat ). However, upon visual
inspection, these images can be divided into three categories:
(i) the residuals exhibit a systematic offset from the fit, but

at a level less than 0.2, (ii) only a single point in the power
spectrum samples the range of scales used, or (iii) most filaments overlap at a certain part of the image, so their individual filamentary structure is not visible. In the first case, the
systematic offset of neighbouring data points is distinct from
the random fluctuation of the residuals in the pink noise image. Thus, a signature of the width is still identifiable in the
spatial power spectrum. In the second case, an offset is observed at data points outside but neighbouring to the range
considered. In the last case, the imprint of the larger cluster dominates the power spectrum and these images cannot
be considered as being comprised of filaments.

Finally, we introduce pink noise with very large amplitude (maximum intensity 30% that of the largest filament
spine intensity) in Fig. B5. The filaments in this image are
the same as in Fig. B4. Now, the signature of the width
(a change of the spectral slope at the corresponding spatial
frequency range) is not visible in the residuals of the power
spectrum from the fit. However, the filaments are barely
distinguishable from the background noise, which is in stark
contrast to observations of clouds.

We conclude that the existence of a characteristic scale

should appear in the spatial power spectrum of an image
(e.g. as a change in the spectral slope), provided that the
structure is easily discernible from the background. In the
case of the spatial power spectrum of the Polaris Flare
(Miville-Deschenes et al. 2010), no such change exists in the
power spectrum at or near the spatial scale corresponding to
the characteristic width (of the very prominent filaments)
at 0.1 pc.
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

13

crest and the mean width can be written as the regression:

log (median power) - log (linear fit)

wi = 0 wi1 + 1 wi2 + 2 wi3 + ... + i + c1 i1 + ...

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5

(C1)
where wi1 is the difference of the width of the point previous to i from the mean width, wi2 is measured two
points away, and so on. Depending on the order p of the
auto-regressive (AR) part of the equation (coefficients ),
wi can have a dependence on the width measured p points
away from position i. i is the residual, what is not taken
into account by the AR terms. It is assumed random and
normally-distributed. The terms containing the residuals at
different positions are the moving-average terms (MA) and
their number q is the order of the MA part of the model.
We wish to model the variation of widths along a filament, based on the data in the Polaris Flare. In order to
find an appropriate model, we must first decide on the order of the model to be fit. The order of the ARMA model
(p, q) can be determined by examination of the Autocorrelation and Partial Autocorrelation functions (ACF, PACF)
of the widths of filaments in the Polaris Flare for p and q,
respectively (Brockwell & Davis 2002).
The ACF is defined as (following Brockwell & Davis
2002):

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
102

ACF(l) =

101

100

f (1/pixel)

Figure B3. Difference between the spatial power spectrum and

a linear fit in log-log space (log(median power) - log(fit)) for an
artificial image with a single filament of constant Rflat . From top
to bottom: Rflat = 8, 12, 16 pixels. The length is 80 pixels for
all three images (dotted vertical line). In each plot, the dashed
vertical line shows the spatial frequency that corresponds to Rflat .
The small vertical lines on the top of each panel show the values
of R1
flat of all 3 images, for comparison between panels.

APPENDIX C: ARMA MODELLING OF

FILAMENT WIDTHS
In section 3.2 we saw that the distributions of all profile
widths and of filament lengths are necessary but not sufficient pieces of information to explain the spread of the
distribution of mean filament widths (mean ). The goal of
this section is to model the variation of widths along the
ridge of a filament. Using this information, we will be able
to explain quantitatively how one obtains a distribution with
mean when averaging the widths from the parent distribution of all profile widths.
We choose to model the variation of profile widths
along a filament using an Auto-Regressive-Moving-Average
(ARMA) process (for a complete description of ARMA modelling, we refer the reader to Brockwell & Davis 2002). Each
filament is regarded as a series of N widths, wi , measured at
all positions (pixels), i = 1N , along the filament crest. The
difference between the width at point i along the filament
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

N l
1 X
(wi+l hwi)(wi hwi), 0 < l < N (C2)
2
N f il i=1

where N is the number of profiles in a filament, l is the

distance (lag) measured along the filament ridge, wi is the
width of the ith profile along the ridge and hwi is the average
width of the filament. Finally, f il is the standard deviation
of profile widths in the filament. The PACF at a given lag
is the autocorrelation at this lag after removal of an AR
model of order lag minus 1. This means that the PACF will
be zero at this lag if the AR model effectively removes all
correlation.
Fig. C1 shows the ACF of widths of all filaments in
the Polaris Flare versus distance along the filament ridge5 .
The ACF drops abruptly and stays around zero for distances
larger than approximately twice the beam size (HPBW =
0.013 pc, dashed vertical line). For most filaments, widths
are strongly correlated only within the beam size. This corresponds to a lag of 3 pixels, and therefore this is the order
of the AR process (p = 3). The ACF of filaments in IC 5146
and Aquila also follow this trend (for IC 5146 HPBW = 0.04
pc, and for Aquila HPBW = 0.023 pc). In Fig. C2 we plot
the PACF of all filaments in the Polaris Flare versus the lag
in pc. The PACF (averaged over all filaments for every given
lag) drops after a lag of 0.004 pc (1 pixel).
Therefore, the (mean-subtracted) widths along filaments in the Polaris Flare can be modelled with p = 3 AR
terms and q = 1 MA term:
wi = 0 wi1 + 1 wi2 + 2 wi3 + i + c1 i1 .

(C3)

We fit equation C3 to the series of widths of each filament

in the Polaris Flare. We wish to obtain a single model that
5

For ARMA modelling and for construction of the

ACF we made use of the python module statsmodels
(http://statsmodels.sourceforge.net/)

14

G. V. Panopoulou et al.

10
log(median power)

0
30.0
50

100

22.5
20.0

150
17.5
15.0

200

12.5
250
0

50

100

150

200

250

6
4
2
0
2

log(median power) - log(fit)

25.0
y (pixels)

Intensity (arbitrary units)

27.5

0.7
0.4
0.1
0.2
0.5
102

x (pixels)

101

100

f (1/pixel)

Figure B4. Same as Fig. B2 but for 10 filaments at random orientations, with a length of 40 pixels and different Rflat , drawn from
the distribution of mean filament widths in Fig. 2 (with values multiplied by 100 so that 0.1 pc is mapped to 10 pixels). The spatial
frequency corresponding to the Rflat of each of the filaments is shown with a dashed vertical line.

10

50

27

100

24
150

21
18

200
15
12

250
0

50

100

150

200

250

x (pixels)

log(median power) - log(fit)

30
y (pixels)

Intensity (arbitrary units)

33

log(median power)

36

9
8
7
6
5
4

0.7
0.4
0.1
0.2
0.5

102

101

100

f (1/pixel)

Figure B5. Same as Fig. B4 but with pink noise with maximum intensity 30% that of the highest filament peak.

on average reproduces well the variation of widths along any

filament in the cloud. This model is equation C3 where the
value of each coefficient is equal to the median of values returned by fitting the equation to each filament. The median
values of the coefficients from the fits to individual filaments
are 1 = 0.8, 2 = 0.2, 3 = 0.05, c1 = 0.23.

mate what part of mean can be attributed to the combined

contribution of the correlation between the widths of neighbouring profiles, and the distribution of filament lengths. We
note that the information on the distribution of all profile
widths is included in the ARMA model, as the coefficients
were found by fitting to real data.

As seen in section 3.2, the observed mean cannot be

explained by only taking into account the distributions of
all profile widths and filament lengths. We will now esti-

To this end, we create 100 groups (filaments) of (meansubtracted) widths in the following way. A number of profiles for each filament is drawn from the distribution of filaMNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

A closer look at the characteristic width of filaments

are found iteratively using equation C3. We then calculate

the average width of each filament. The distribution of average filament widths has a spread of 0.011 pc, similar to
the observed mean of 0.014 pc in the cloud. This process is
repeated 100 times to quantify whether the difference (0.014
pc versus 0.011 pc) is significant. We find that the observed
mean is within the spread of the results of the simulation.
We have found that mean can be predicted based on
three pieces of information: the distribution of all profile
widths, the distribution of filament lengths, and the correlation of widths within a beam size. From the CLT we
understand the effect of these three as follows: A broader
distribution of all profile widths will increase the uncertainty
on the mean (mean ), as seen in equation 1. From the same
equation, it follows that a population of filaments with on
average larger lengths will have a smaller mean . Finally, we
have seen that neglecting the effect of the beam (random
draws of the width from the parent distribution) produces
a narrow mean . The effect of the beam is to introduce a
larger uncertainty on the mean, by effectively reducing the
number of independent measurements in a single filament.

1.0

0.8

ACF

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0.2

102

101
lag (pc)

100

Figure C1. ACF of all filaments in the Polaris Flare versus distance. The black line shows the ACF averaged over all filaments
for a given lag (distance). The 1 standard deviation of the ACF
of all filaments at a given lag is shown with a grey band. The
vertical line shows the HPBW (beam size) of 0.013 pc. The plot
has been truncated at a distance of 2 pc for clarity.

1.0
0.8

PACF

0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.000

0.005

0.010
0.015
lag (pc)

0.020

0.025

Figure C2. As in Fig. C1 but now showing the PACF of all

filaments versus distance. The horizontal axis has been truncated
at a distance of 0.025 pc.

ment lengths in the Polaris Flare. Each filament is assigned a

starting value drawn from a normal distribution with mean
0 and standard deviation equal to that of the distribution of
i from the fits to individual filaments. This starting value
corresponds to the mean-subtracted width of the first filament profile. Consecutive (mean-subtracted) profile widths
MNRAS 000, 115 (2016)

15

This paper has been typeset from a TEX/LATEX file prepared by

the author.