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Register a new userAn Observational Perspective of Low-Mass Dense Cores I: Internal Physical and Chemical Properties
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Low-mass dense cores represent the state of molecular gas associated with the earliest phases of low-mass star formation. Such cores are called protostellar or starless, depending on whether they do or do not contain compact sources of luminosity. In this chapter, the first half of the review of low-mass dense cores, we describe the numerous inferences made about the nature of starless cores as a result of recent observations, since these reveal the initial conditions of star formation. We focus on the identification of isolated starless cores and their internal physical and chemical properties, including morphologies, densities, temperatures, kinematics, and molecular abundances. These objects display a wide range of properties since they are each at different points on evolutionary paths from ambient molecular cloud material to cold, contracting, and centrally concentrated configurations with significant molecular depletions and, in rare cases, enhancements.
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We review the properties of low mass dense molecular cloud cores, including starless, prestellar, and Class 0 protostellar cores, as derived from observations. In particular we discuss them in the context of the current debate surrounding the formation and evolution of cores. There exist several families of model scenarios to explain this evolution (with many variations of each) that can be thought of as a continuum of models lying between two extreme paradigms for the star and core formation process. At one extreme there is the dynamic, turbulent picture, while at the other extreme there is a slow, quasi-static vision of core evolution. In the latter view the magnetic field plays a dominant role, and it may also play some role in the former picture. Polarization and Zeeman measurements indicate that some, if not all, cores contain a significant magnetic field. Wide-field surveys constrain the timescales of the core formation and evolution processes, as well as the statistical distribution of core masses. The former indicates that prestellar cores typically live for 2--5 free-fall times, while the latter seems to determine the stellar initial mass function. In addition, multiple surveys allow one to compare core properties in different regions. From this it appears that aspects of different models may be relevant to different star-forming regions, depending on the environment. Prestellar cores in cluster-forming regions are smaller in radius and have higher column densities, by up to an order of magnitude, than isolated prestellar cores. This is probably due to the fact that in cluster-forming regions the prestellar cores are formed by fragmentation of larger, more turbulent cluster-forming cores, which in turn form as a result of strong external compression.
We found that in regions of high mass star formation the CS emission correlates well with the dust continuum emission and is therefore a good tracer of the total mass while the N$_2$H$^+$ distribution is frequently very different. This is opposite to their typical behavior in low-mass cores where freeze-out plays a crucial role in the chemistry. The behavior of other high density tracers varies from source to source but most of them are closer to CS. Radial density profiles in massive cores are fitted by power laws with indices about -1.6, as derived from the dust continuum emission. The radial temperature dependence on intermediate scales is close to the theoretically expected one for a centrally heated optically thin cloud. The velocity dispersion either remains constant or decreases from the core center to the edge. Several cores including those without known embedded IR sources show signs of infall motions. They can represent the earliest phases of massive protostars. There are implicit arguments in favor of small-scale clumpiness in the cores.
We present deep NH$_3$ observations of the L1495-B218 filaments in the Taurus molecular cloud covering over a 3 degree angular range using the K-band focal plane array on the 100m Green Bank Telescope. The L1495-B218 filaments form an interconnected, nearby, large complex extending over 8 pc. We observed NH$_3$ (1,1) and (2,2) with a spectral resolution of 0.038 km/s and a spatial resolution of 31$$. Most of the ammonia peaks coincide with intensity peaks in dust continuum maps at 350 $mu$m and 500 $mu$m. We deduced physical properties by fitting a model to the observed spectra. We find gas kinetic temperatures of 8 $-$ 15 K, velocity dispersions of 0.05 $-$ 0.25 km/s, and NH$_3$ column densities of 5$times$10$^{12}$ $-$ 1$times$10$^{14}$ cm$^{-2}$. The CSAR algorithm, which is a hybrid of seeded-watershed and binary dendrogram algorithms, identifies a total of 55 NH$_3$ structures including 39 leaves and 16 branches. The masses of the NH$_3$ sources range from 0.05 M$_odot$ to 9.5 M$_odot$. The masses of NH$_3$ leaves are mostly smaller than their corresponding virial mass estimated from their internal and gravitational energies, which suggests these leaves are gravitationally unbound structures. 9 out of 39 NH$_3$ leaves are gravitationally bound and 7 out of 9 gravitationally bound NH$_3$ leaves are associated with star formation. We also found that 12 out of 30 gravitationally unbound leaves are pressure-confined. Our data suggest that a dense core may form as a pressure-confined structure, evolve to a gravitationally bound core, and undergo collapse to form a protostar.
We present a possible identification strategy for first hydrostatic core (FHSC) candidates and make predictions of ALMA dust continuum emission maps from these objects. We analyze the results given by the different bands and array configurations and identify which combinations of the two represent our best chance of solving the fragmentation issue in these objects. If the magnetic field is playing a role, the emission pattern will show evidence of a pseudo-disk and even of a magnetically driven outflow, which pure hydrodynamical calculations cannot reproduce.
We aim to reveal the physical properties and chemical composition of the cores in the California molecular cloud (CMC), so as to better understand the initial conditions of star formation. We made a high-resolution column density map (18.2) with Herschel data, and extracted a complete sample of the cores in the CMC with the textsl{fellwalker} algorithm. We performed new single-pointing observations of molecular lines near 90 GHz with the IRAM 30m telescope along the main filament of the CMC. In addition, we also performed a numerical modeling of chemical evolution for the cores under the physical conditions. We extracted 300 cores, of which 33 are protostellar and 267 are starless cores. About 51% (137 of 267) of the starless cores are prestellar cores. Three cores have the potential to evolve into high-mass stars. The prestellar core mass function (CMF) can be well fit by a log-normal form. The high-mass end of the prestellar CMF shows a power-law form with an index $alpha=-0.9pm 0.1$ that is shallower than that of the Galactic field stellar mass function. Combining the mass transformation efficiency ($varepsilon$) from the prestellar core to the star of $15pm 1%$ and the core formation efficiency (CFE) of 5.5%, we suggest an overall star formation efficiency of about 1% in the CMC. In the single-pointing observations with the IRAM 30m telescope, we find that 6 cores show blue-skewed profile, while 4 cores show red-skewed profile. [$rm {HCO}^{+}$]/[HNC] and [$rm {HCO}^{+}$]/$rm [N_{2}H^{+}]$ in protostellar cores are higher than those in prestellar cores; this can be used as chemical clocks. The best-fit chemical age of the cores with line observations is $sim 5times 10^4$~years.
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