Fluorescent H_2 Emission Lines from the Reflection Nebula NGC 7023 Observed with IGRINS

We have analyzed the temperature, velocity and density of H_2 gas in NGC 7023 with a high-resolution near-infrared spectrum of the northwestern filament of the reflection nebula. By observing NGC 7023 in the H and K bands at R ~ 45,000 with the Immersion GRating INfrared Spectrograph (IGRINS), we detected 70 H_2 emission lines within the 1" x 15" slit. The diagnostic ratios of 2-1 S(1)/1-0 S(1) are 0.39-0.54. In addition, the estimated ortho-to-para ratios (OPR) are 1.57-1.62, indicating that the H_2 transitions in the observed regions are mostly from UV fluorescence. Gradients in the temperature, velocity, and OPR of the observed areas imply motion of the photodissociation region (PDR) relative to the molecular cloud. In addition, we derive the column density of H_2 from the observed emission lines and compare these results with PDR models in the literature covering a range of densities and incident UV field intensities. The notable difference between PDR model predictions and the observed data, in high rotational J levels of v = 1, is that the predicted formation temperature for newly-formed H_2 should be lower than that of the model predictions. To investigate the density distribution, we combine pixels in 1" x 1" areas and derive the density distribution at the 0.002 pc scale. The derived gradient of density suggests that NGC 7023 has a clumpy structure, including a high clump density of ~10^5 cm^-3 with a size smaller than ~0.005 pc embedded in lower density regions of 10^3-10^4 cm^-3.