Context. Extracting the multiphase structure of the neutral interstellar medium (ISM) is key to understand the star formation in galaxies. The radiative condensation of the diffuse warm neutral medium producing a thermally unstable lukewarm medium and a dense cold medium is closely related to the initial step which leads the atomic-to-molecular (HI-to-H 2 ) transition and the formation of molecular clouds. Up to now the mapping of these phases out of 21 cm emission hyper-spectral cubes has remained elusive mostly due to the velocity blending of individual cold structures present on a given line of sight. As a result, most of the current knowledge about the HI phases rests on a small number of absorption measurements on lines of sight crossing radio sources. Aims. The goal of this work was to develop a new algorithm to perform separation of diffuse sources in hyper-spectral data. Specifically the algorithm was designed in order to address the velocity blending problem by taking advantage of the spatial coherence of the individual sources. The main scientific driver of this effort was to extract the multiphase structure of the HI from 21 cm line emission only, providing a mean to map each phase separately, but the algorithm developed here should be generic enough to extract diffuse structures in any hyper-spectral cube. Methods. We developed a new Gaussian decomposition algorithm named ROHSA (Regularized Optimization for Hyper-Spectral Analysis) based on a multi-resolution process from coarse to fine grid. ROHSA uses a regularized non-linear least-square criterion to take into account simultaneously the spatial coherence of the emission and the multiphase nature of the gas. In order to obtain a solution with spatially smooth parameters, the optimization is performed on the whole data cube at once. The performances of ROHSA were tested on a synthetic observation computed from numerical simulations of thermally bi-stable turbulence. An application on a 21 cm observation of a high Galactic latitude region from the GHIGLS survey is presented. Results. The evaluation of ROHSA on synthetic 21 cm observations shows that it is able to recover the multiphase nature of the HI. For each phase, the power spectra of the column density and centroid velocity are well recovered. More generally that test reveals that a Gaussian decomposition of HI emission is able to recover physically meaningful information about the underlying three-dimensional fields (density, velocity and temperature). The application on a real 21 cm observation of a high Galactic latitude field produces a picture of the multiphase HI, with isolated, filamentary and narrow (σ ∼ 1 − 2 km s −1 ) structures and wider (σ ∼ 4 − 10 km s −1 ), diffuse and space filling components. The test-case field used here contains significant intermediate-velocity clouds that were well mapped out by the algorithm. As ROHSA is designed to extract spatially coherent components, it performs well at projecting out the noise. Conclusions. In this paper we are introducing ROHSA a new a...

How efficiently star formation proceeds in galaxies is still an open question. Recent studies suggest that active galactic nucleus (AGN) can regulate the gas accretion and thus slow down star formation (negative feedback). However, evidence of AGN positive feedback has also been observed in a few radio galaxies (e.g. Centaurus A, Minkowski's Object, 3C 285, and the higher redshift 4C 41.17). Here we present CO observations of 3C 285 and Minkowski's Object, which are examples of jet-induced star formation. A spot (named 3C 285/09.6 in the present paper) aligned with the 3C 285 radio jet at a projected distance of ∼70 kpc from the galaxy centre shows star formation that is detected in optical emission. Minkowski's Object is located along the jet of NGC 541 and also shows star formation. Knowing the distribution of molecular gas along the jets is a way to study the physical processes at play in the AGN interaction with the intergalactic medium. We observed CO lines in 3C 285, NGC 541, 3C 285/09.6, and Minkowski's Object with the IRAM 30 m telescope. In the central galaxies, the spectra present a double-horn profile, typical of a rotation pattern, from which we are able to estimate the molecular gas density profile of the galaxy. The molecular gas appears to be in a compact reservoir, which could be evidence of an early phase of the gas accretion after a recent merger event in 3C 285. No kinematic signature of a molecular outflow is detected by the 30 m telescope. Interestingly, 3C 285/09.6 and Minkowski's Object are not detected in CO. The cold gas mass upper limits are consistent with a star formation induced by the compression of dense ambient material by the jet. The depletion time scales in 3C 285/09.6 and Minkowski's Object are of the order of and even shorter than what is found in 3C 285, NGC 541, and local spiral galaxies (10 9 yr). The upper limit of the molecular gas surface density in 3C 285/09.6 at least follows a Schmidt-Kennicutt law if the emitting region is very compact, as suggested by the Hα emission, while Minkowski's Object is found to have a much higher star formation efficiency lower limit (very short depletion time). Higher sensitivity is necessary to detect CO in the star-forming spots, and higher spatial resolution is required to map the emission in these jet-induced star-forming regions.

NGC 5128 (also known as Centaurus A) is the most nearby powerful AGN, widely studied at all wavelengths. Molecular gas has been found in the halo at a distance of ∼20 kpc from the galaxy center, associated with H  shells, through CO line detection at SEST (Charmandaris et al. 2000, A&A, 356, L1). The molecular gas lies inside some IR and UV bright star-forming filaments that have recently been observed in the direction of the radio jets. These archival data from GALEX (FUV) and Herschel (IR) show that there is dust and very weak star formation (a few 10 −5 −10 −4 M yr −1 ) on scales of hundreds of parsecs. NGC 5128 is thus a perfect target for detailed studies of the star formation processes at the interface of the jet/gas interaction. On top of analysing combined archival data, we have performed searches of HCN(1-0) and HCO + (1-0) emission with ATCA at the interaction of the northern filaments and the northern H  shell of Centaurus A. Measuring the dense gas is another indicator of star formation efficiency inside the filaments.However, we only derived upper limits L HCN < 1.6×10 3 K km s −1 pc 2 and L HCO + < 1.6×10 3 K km s −1 pc 2 at 3σ in the synthesised beam of 3.1 . Compared with the CO luminosity, this lead to a dense-to-molecular gas fraction <23%. We also compared the CO masses with the star formation rate estimates in order to measure a star formation efficiency. Using a standard conversion factor leads to long depletion times (7 Gyr). We then corrected the mass estimates from metallicity effect by using gas-to-dust mass ratio as a proxy. From MUSE data, we estimated the metallicity spread (0.4−0.8 Z ) in an other region of the filament, that corresponds to gas-to-dust ratios of ∼200−400. Assuming the same metallicity range in the CO-detected part of the filament, the CO/H 2 conversion ratio is corrected for low metallicity by a factor between 1.4 and 3.2. Such a low-metallicity correction leads to even more massive clouds with higher depletion times (16 Gyr). We finally present ALMA observations that detect 3 unresolved CO(2−1) clumps of size <37 × 21 pc and masses around 10 4 M . The velocity width of the CO emission line is ∼10 km s −1 , leading to a rather high virial parameter. This is a hint of a turbulent gas probably powered by kinetic energy injection from the AGN jet/wind and leading to molecular gas reservoir not forming star efficiently. This work shows the importance of high resolution data analysis to bring a new light on the local processes of AGN/jet feedback likely negative (quenching star formation) in the case of Cen A filaments.