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Register a new userMulti-line spectral imaging of dense cores in the Lupus molecular cloud
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The molecular clouds Lupus 1, 3 and 4 were mapped with the Mopra telescope at 3 and 12 mm. Emission lines from high density molecular tracers were detected, i.e. NH$_3$ (1,1), NH$_3$ (2,2), N$_2$H$^+$ (1-0), HC$_3$N (3-2), HC$_3$N (10-9), CS (2-1), CH$_3$OH (2$_0-1_0$)A$^+$ and CH$_3$OH (2$_{-1}-1_{-1}$)E. Velocity gradients of more than 1 km s$^{-1}$ are present in Lupus 1 and 3 and multiple gas components are present in these clouds along some lines of sight. Lupus 1 is the cloud richest in high density cores, 8 cores were detected in it, 5 cores were detected in Lupus 3 and only 2 in Lupus 4. The intensity of the three species HC$_3$N, NH$_3$ and N$_2$H$^+$ changes significantly in the various cores: cores that are brighter in HC$_3$N are fainter or undetected in NH$_3$ and N$_2$H$^+$ and vice versa. We found that the column density ratios HC$_3$N/N$_2$H$^+$ and HC$_3$N/NH$_3$ change by one order of magnitude between the cores, indicating that also the chemical abundance of these species is different. The time dependent chemical code that we used to model our cores shows that the HC$_3$N/N$_2$H$^+$ and HC$_3$N/NH$_3$ ratios decrease with time therefore the observed column density of these species can be used as an indicator of the chemical evolution of dense cores. On this base we classified 5 out of 8 cores in Lupus 1 and 1 out of 5 cores in Lupus 3 as very young protostars or prestellar cores. Comparing the millimetre cores population with the population of the more evolved young stellar objects identified in the Spitzer surveys, we conclude that in Lupus 3 the bulk of the star formation activity has already passed and only a moderate number of stars are still forming. On the contrary, in Lupus 1 star formation is on-going and several dense cores are still in the pre--/proto--stellar phase. Lupus 4 is at an intermediate stage, with a smaller number of individual objects.
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Molecular clouds are a fundamental ingredient of galaxies: they are the channels that transform the diffuse gas into stars. The detailed process of how they do it is not completely understood. We review the current knowledge of molecular clouds and their substructure from scales $sim~$1~kpc down to the filament and core scale. We first review the mechanisms of cloud formation from the warm diffuse interstellar medium down to the cold and dense molecular clouds, the process of molecule formation and the role of the thermal and gravitational instabilities. We also discuss the main physical mechanisms through which clouds gather their mass, and note that all of them may have a role at various stages of the process. In order to understand the dynamics of clouds we then give a critical review of the widely used virial theorem, and its relation to the measurable properties of molecular clouds. Since these properties are the tools we have for understanding the dynamical state of clouds, we critically analyse them. We finally discuss the ubiquitous filamentary structure of molecular clouds and its connection to prestellar cores and star formation.
Coreshine in dense molecular cloud cores (dense cores) is interpreted as evidence for micrometer-sized grains (referred to as very large grains, VLGs). VLGs may have a significant influence on the total dust amount and the extinction curve. We estimate the total abundance of VLGs in the Galaxy, assuming that dense cores are the site of VLG formation. We find that the VLG abundance relative to the total dust mass is roughly $phi_mathrm{VLG}sim 0.01(1-epsilon )/epsilon (tau_mathrm{SF}/5times 10^9~mathrm{yr})^{-1} (f_mathrm{VLG}/0.5)(t_mathrm{shat}/10^8~mathrm{yr})$, where $epsilon$ is the star formation efficiency in dense cores, $tau_mathrm{SF}$ the timescale of gas consumption by star formation, $f_mathrm{VLG}$ the fraction of dust mass eventually coagulated into VLGs in dense cores, and $t_mathrm{shat}$ the lifetime of VLGs (determined by shattering). Adopting their typical values for the Galaxy, we obtain $phi_mathrm{VLG}sim 0.02$--0.09. This abundance is well below the value detected in the heliosphere by Ulysses and Galileo, which means that local enhancement of VLG abundance in the solar neighborhood is required if the VLGs originate from dense cores. We also show that the effects of VLGs on the extinction curve are negligible even with the upper value of the above range, $phi_mathrm{VLG}sim 0.09$. If we adopt an extreme value, $phi_mathrm{VLG}sim 0.5$, close to that inferred from the above spacecraft data, the extinction curve is still in the range of the variation in Galactic extinction curves, but is not typical of the diffuse ISM.
We have conducted a spectral line survey observation in the 3 mm band toward the low-metallicity dwarf galaxy IC10 with the 45 m radio telescope of Nobeyama Radio Observatory to explore its chemical composition at a molecular-cloud scale (~80 pc). The CS, SO, CCH, HCN, HCO+, and HNC lines are detected for the first time in this galaxy in addition to the CO and 13CO lines, while c-C3H2, CH3OH, CN, C18O, and N2H+ lines are not detected. The spectral intensity pattern is found to be similar to those observed toward molecular clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud, whose metallicity is as low as IC10. Nitrogen-bearing species are deficient in comparison with the Galactic molecular clouds due to a lower elemental abundance of nitrogen. CCH is abundant in comparison with Galactic translucent clouds, whereas CH3OH may be deficient. These characteristic trends for CCH and CH3OH are also seen in the LMC, and seem to originate from photodissociation regions more extended in peripheries of molecular clouds due to the lower metallicity condition.
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 the first results of high-spectral resolution (0.023 km/s) N$_2$H$^+$ observations of dense gas dynamics at core scales (~0.01 pc) using the recently commissioned Argus instrument on the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). While the fitted linear velocity gradients across the cores measured in our targets nicely agree with the well-known power-law correlation between the specific angular momentum and core size, it is unclear if the observed gradients represent core-scale rotation. In addition, our Argus data reveal detailed and intriguing gas structures in position-velocity (PV) space for all 5 targets studied in this project, which could suggest that the velocity gradients previously observed in many dense cores actually originate from large-scale turbulence or convergent flow compression instead of rigid-body rotation. We also note that there are targets in this study with their star-forming disks nearly perpendicular to the local velocity gradients, which, assuming the velocity gradient represents the direction of rotation, is opposite to what is described by the classical theory of star formation. This provides important insight on the transport of angular momentum within star-forming cores, which is a critical topic on studying protostellar disk formation.
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