No Arabic abstract
Ten protostellar outflows in the Orion molecular clouds were mapped in the $^{12}$CO/$^{13}$CO ${J=6rightarrow5}$ and $^{12}$CO ${J=7rightarrow6}$ lines. The maps of these mid-$J$ CO lines have an angular resolution of about 10$$ and a typical field size of about 100$$. Physical parameters of the molecular outflows were derived, including mass transfer rates, kinetic luminosities, and outflow forces. The outflow sample was expanded by re-analyzing archival data of nearby low-luminosity protostars, to cover a wide range of bolometric luminosities. Outflow parameters derived from other transitions of CO were compared. The mid-$J$ ($J_{rm up} approx 6$) and low-$J$ ($J_{rm up} leq 3$) CO line wings trace essentially the same outflow component. By contrast, the high-$J$ (up to $J_{rm up} approx 50$) line-emission luminosity of CO shows little correlation with the kinetic luminosity from the ${J=6rightarrow5}$ line, which suggests that they trace distinct components. The low/mid-$J$ CO line wings trace long-term outflow behaviors while the high-$J$ CO lines are sensitive to short-term activities. The correlations between the outflow parameters and protostellar properties are presented, which shows that the strengths of molecular outflows increase with bolometric luminosity and envelope mass.
We observe 1.3~mm spectral lines at 2000~AU resolution toward four massive molecular clouds in the Central Molecular Zone of the Galaxy to investigate their star formation activities. We focus on several potential shock tracers that are usually abundant in protostellar outflows, including SiO, SO, CH$_3$OH, H$_2$CO, HC$_3$N, and HNCO. We identify 43 protostellar outflows, including 37 highly likely ones and 6 candidates. The outflows are found toward both known high-mass star forming cores and less massive, seemingly quiescent cores, while 791 out of the 834 cores identified based on the continuum do not have detected outflows. The outflow masses range from less than 1~$M_odot$ to a few tens of $M_odot$, with typical uncertainties of a factor of 70. We do not find evidence of disagreement between relative molecular abundances in these outflows and in nearby analogs such as the well-studied L1157 and NGC7538S outflows. The results suggest that i) protostellar accretion disks driving outflows ubiquitously exist in the CMZ environment, ii) the large fraction of candidate starless cores is expected if these clouds are at very early evolutionary phases, with a caveat on the potential incompleteness of the outflows, iii) high-mass and low-mass star formation is ongoing simultaneously in these clouds, and iv) current data do not show evidence of difference between the shock chemistry in the outflows that determines the molecular abundances in the CMZ environment and in nearby clouds.
High spatial resolution low-J 12CO observations have shown that the wide-angle outflow seen in the Orion BN/KL region correlates with the famous H2 fingers. Recently, high-resolution large-scale mappings of mid- and higher-J CO emissions have been reported toward the Orion molecular cloud 1 core region using the APEX telescope. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate this outflow in the higher-J 12CO emission, which is likely excited by shocks. The observations were carried out using the dual-color heterodyne array CHAMP+ on the APEX telescope. The images of the Orion BN/KL region were obtained in the 12CO J=6-5 and J=7-6 transitions with angular resolutions of 8.6 and 7.4 arcsec, respectively. The results show a good agreement between our higher-J 12CO emission and SMA low-J 12CO data, which indicates that this wide-angle outflow in Orion BN/KL is likely the result of an explosive event that is related to the runaway objects from a dynamically decayed multiple system. From our observations, we estimate that the kinetic energy of this explosive outflow is about 1-2x10^47 erg. In addition, a scenario has been proposed where part of the outflow is decelerated and absorbed in the cloud to explain the lack of CO bullets in the southern part of BN/KL, which in turn induces the methanol masers seen in this region.
Line emission is strongly dependent on the local environmental conditions in which the emitting tracers reside. In this work, we focus on modelling the CO emission from simulated giant molecular clouds (GMCs), and study the variations in the resulting line ratios arising from the emission from the $J=1-0$, $J=2-1$ and $J=3-2$ transitions. We perform a set of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations with time-dependent chemistry, in which environmental conditions -- including total cloud mass, density, size, velocity dispersion, metallicity, interstellar radiation field (ISRF) and the cosmic ray ionisation rate (CRIR) -- were systematically varied. The simulations were then post-processed using radiative transfer to produce synthetic emission maps in the 3 transitions quoted above. We find that the cloud-averaged values of the line ratios can vary by up to $pm 0.3$ dex, triggered by changes in the environmental conditions. Changes in the ISRF and/or in the CRIR have the largest impact on line ratios since they directly affect the abundance, temperature and distribution of CO-rich gas within the clouds. We show that the standard methods used to convert CO emission to H$_2$ column density can underestimate the total H$_2$ molecular gas in GMCs by factors of 2 or 3, depending on the environmental conditions in the clouds.
We report on a preliminary analysis of the diffuse gamma-ray observations of local giant molecular clouds Orion A and B with the Large Area Telescope onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The gamma-ray emission of the clouds is well explained by hadronic and electromagnetic interactions between cosmic rays and nuclei in the clouds. In consequence, we obtain the total masses of the Orion A and B clouds to be (80.6 +/- 7.5 +/- 4.8) x 10^3 Msun and (39.5 +/- 5.2 +/- 2.6) x 10^3 Msun, respectively, for the distance to the clouds of 400 pc and the Galactic CR spectrum predicted by GALPROP on the local observations of CRs. The structure of molecular clouds have been extensively studied by radio telescopes, especially using the line intensity of CO molecules (WCO) and a constant conversion factor from Wco to N (H_2) (= Xco). However, this factor is found to be significantly different for Orion A and B: 1.76 +/- 0.04 +/- 0.02 and 1.27 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.01, respectively.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of $mathrm{^{13}CO(J=1-0)}$ line and 104 GHz continuum emission from NGC 604, a giant HII region (GHR) in the nearby spiral galaxy M33. Our high spatial resolution images ( 3.2$times$ 2.4, corresponding to $13 times 10$ pc physical scale) allow us to detect fifteen molecular clouds. We find spatial offsets between the $^{13}CO$ and 104 GHz continuum emission and also detect continuum emission near the centre of the GHR. The identified molecular clouds have sizes ranging from 5-21 pc, linewidths of 0.3-3.0 $mathrm{kms^{-1}}$ and luminosity-derived masses of (0.4-80.5) $times 10^3$ M$_{bigodot}$. These molecular clouds are in near virial equilibrium, with a spearman correlation coefficient of 0.98. The linewidth-size relationship for these clouds is offset from the corresponding relations for the Milky Way and for NGC 300, although this may be an artefact of the dendrogram process.