Modeling CO Line Luminosity Using FIRE Simulations: I. Methodology and Validation of Molecular Gas and CO Abundance
A pipeline was developed to predict CO line luminosities, molecular hydrogen masses, and CO abundances in FIRE-2 simulations. Using SKIRT for radiation fields and CLOUDY for molecular physics, the method was validated against Milky Way observations. Results show the predicted rise in $ ext{L}' ext{CO}(1-0)$ at specific column densities matches observations, confirming the pipeline's utility for modeling molecular gas properties.