Nature of striation in 21 cm channel Maps: velocity caustics

ABSTRACT The alignment of striated intensity structures in thin neutral hydrogen (H i) spectroscopic channels with Galactic magnetic fields has been observed. However, the origin and nature of these striations are still debatable. Some studies suggest that the striations result solely from real cold-density filaments without considering the role of turbulent velocity fields in shaping the channel’s intensity distribution. To determine the relative contribution of density and velocity in forming the striations in channel maps, we analyse synthetic observations of channel maps obtained from realistic magnetized multiphase H i simulations with thermal broadening included. We vary the thickness of the channel maps and apply the Velocity Decomposition Algorithm to separate the velocity and density contributions. In parallel, we analyse GALFA-H i observations and compare the results. Our analysis shows that the thin channels are dominated by velocity contribution, and velocity caustics mainly generate the H i striations. We show that velocity caustics can cause a correlation between unsharp-masked H i structures and far-infrared emission. We demonstrate that the linear H i fibers revealed by the Rolling Hough Transform (RHT) in thin velocity channels originate from velocity caustics. As the thickness of channel maps increases, the relative contribution of density fluctuations in channel maps increases and more RHT-detected fibers tend to be perpendicular to the magnetic field. Conversely, the alignment with the magnetic field is the most prominent in thin channels. We conclude that similar to the velocity channel gradients (VChGs) approach, RHT traces magnetic fields through the analysis of velocity caustics in thin channel maps.