No Arabic abstract
Hot corino chemistry and warm carbon chain chemistry (WCCC) are driven by gas-grain interactions in star-forming cores: radical-radical recombination reactions to form complex organic molecules (COMs) in the ice mantle, sublimation of CH$_4$ and COMs, and their subsequent gas-phase reactions. These chemical features are expected to depend on the composition of ice mantle which is set in the prestellar phase. We calculated the gas-grain chemical reaction network considering a layered ice-mantle structure in star-forming cores, to investigate how the hot corino chemistry and WCCC depend on the physical condition of the static phase before the onset of gravitational collapse. We found that WCCC becomes more active, if the temperature is lower, or the visual extinction is lower in the static phase, or the static phase is longer. Dependence of hot corino chemistry on the static-phase condition is more complex. While CH$_3$OH is less abundant in the models with warmer static phase, some COMs are formed efficiently in those warm models, since there are various formation paths of COMs. If the visual extinction is lower, photolysis makes COMs less abundant in the static phase. Once the collapse starts and visual extinction increases, however, COMs can be formed efficiently. Duration of the static phase does not largely affect COM abundances. Chemical diversity between prototypical hot corinos and hybrid sources, in which both COMs and carbon chains are reasonably abundant, can be explained by the variation of prestellar conditions. Deficiency of gaseous COMs in prototypical WCCC sources is, however, hard to reproduce within our models.
Building on our previous hydrodynamic study of the angular momenta of cloud cores formed during gravitational collapse of star-forming molecular gas in our previous work, we now examine core properties assuming ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Using the same sink-patch implementation for the emph{Athena} MHD code, we characterize the statistical properties of cores, including the mass accretion rates, specific angular momenta, and alignments between the magnetic field and the spin axis of the core on the $0.1 mathrm{pc}$ scale. Our simulations, which reproduce the observed relation between magnetic field strength and gas density, show that magnetic fields can help collimate low density flows and help seed the locations of filamentary structures. Consistent with our previous purely hydrodynamic simulations, stars (sinks) form within the heterogeneous environments of filaments, such that accretion onto cores is highly episodic leading to short-term variability but no long-term monotonic growth of the specific angular momenta. With statistical characterization of protostellar cores properties and behaviors, we aim to provide a starting point for building more realistic and self-consistent disk formation models, helping to address whether magnetic fields can prevent the development of (large) circumstellar disks in the ideal MHD limit.
We present results of 1.3 mm dust polarization observations toward 16 nearby, low-mass protostars, mapped with ~2.5 resolution at CARMA. The results show that magnetic fields in protostellar cores on scales of ~1000 AU are not tightly aligned with outflows from the protostars. Rather, the data are consistent with scenarios where outflows and magnetic fields are preferentially misaligned (perpendicular), or where they are randomly aligned. If one assumes that outflows emerge along the rotation axes of circumstellar disks, and that the outflows have not disrupted the fields in the surrounding material, then our results imply that the disks are not aligned with the fields in the cores from which they formed.
We present the results of a suite of numerical simulations designed to explore the origin of the angular momenta of protostellar cores. Using the hydrodynamic grid code emph{Athena} with a sink implementation, we follow the formation of protostellar cores and protostars (sinks) from the subvirial collapse of molecular clouds on larger scales to investigate the range and relative distribution of core properties. We find that the core angular momenta are relatively unaffected by large-scale rotation of the parent cloud; instead, we infer that angular momenta are mainly imparted by torques between neighboring mass concentrations and exhibit a log-normal distribution. Our current simulation results are limited to size scales $sim 0.05$~pc ($sim 10^4 rm AU$), but serve as first steps toward the ultimate goal of providing initial conditions for higher-resolution studies of core collapse to form protoplanetary disks.
(Abridged) The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare the physical and chemical structure of Class I low-mass protostellar sources on protoplanetary disc scales. We present a study of the dust and gas emission towards a representative sample of 12 Class I protostars from the Ophiuchus molecular cloud with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The continuum at 0.87 mm and molecular transitions from C17O, C34S, H13CO+, CH3OH, SO2 , and C2H were observed at high angular resolution (0.4, ~60 au diameter) towards each source. Disc and stellar masses are estimated from the continuum flux and position-velocity diagrams, and six of the sources show disc-like structures. Towards the more luminous sources, compact emission and large line widths are seen for transitions of SO2 that probe warm gas (Eu ~200 K). In contrast, C17O emission is detected towards the least evolved and less luminous systems. No emission of CH3OH is detected towards any of the continuum peaks, indicating an absence of warm CH3OH gas towards these sources. A power-law relation is seen between the stellar mass and the bolometric luminosity, corresponding to a mass accretion rate of (2.4 +/- 0.6) x 10^-7 Msun/year for the Class I sources. This mass accretion rate is lower than the expected value if the accretion is constant in time and rather points to a scenario of accretion occurring in bursts. The differentiation between C17O and SO2 suggests that they trace different physical components: C17O traces the densest and colder regions of the disc-envelope system, while SO2 may be associated with regions of higher temperature, such as accretion shocks. The lack of warm CH3OH emission suggests that there is no hot-core-like region around any of the sources and that the CH3OH column density averaged over the disc is low.
Extremely large deuteration of several molecules has been observed towards prestellar cores and low-mass protostars for a decade. New observations performed towards low-mass protostars suggest that water presents a lower deuteration in the warm inner gas than in the cold external envelope. We coupled a gas-grain astrochemical model with a one-dimension model of collapsing core to properly follow the formation and the deuteration of interstellar ices as well as their subsequent evaporation in the low-mass protostellar envelopes with the aim of interpreting the spatial and temporal evolutions of their deuteration. The astrochemical model follows the formation and the evaporation of ices with a multilayer approach and also includes a state-of-the-art deuterated chemical network by taking the spin states of H$_2$ and light ions into account. Because of their slow formation, interstellar ices are chemically heterogeneous and show an increase of their deuterium fractionation towards the surface. The differentiation of the deuteration in ices induces an evolution of the deuteration within protostellar envelopes. The warm inner region is poorly deuterated because it includes the whole molecular content of ices while the deuteration predicted in the cold external envelope scales with the highly deuterated surface of ices. We are able to reproduce the observed evolution of water deuteration within protostellar envelopes but we are still unable to predict the super-high deuteration observed for formaldehyde and methanol. Finally, the extension of this study to the deuteration of complex organics (COMs), important for the prebiotic chemistry, shows a good agreement with the observations, suggesting that we can use the deuteration to retrace their mechanisms and their moments of formation.