Related papers: Molecular Line Profiles of Collapsing Gas Clouds
Observed molecular clouds often appear to have very low star formation efficiencies and lifetimes an order of magnitude longer than their free-fall times. Their support is attributed to the random supersonic motions observed in them. We…
Understanding the physical properties of star-forming cores as mass reservoirs for protostars, and the impact of turbulence, is crucial in star formation studies. We implemented passive tracer particles in clump-scale numerical simulations…
We use 3D-PDR, a three-dimensional astrochemistry code for modeling photodissociation regions (PDRs), to post-process hydrodynamic simulations of turbulent, star-forming clouds. We focus on the transition from atomic to molecular gas, with…
$Aims.$ We characterize the molecular-line emission of three clouds whose star-formation rates span one order of magnitude: California, Perseus, and Orion A. $Methods.$ We use stratified random sampling to select positions representing the…
Motivated by recent observations that show starless molecular cloud cores exhibit subsonic inward velocities, we revisit the collapse problem for polytropic gaseous spheres. In particular, we provide a generalized treatment of protostellar…
Studying the physical and chemical processes leading to the formation of low-mass stars is crucial for understanding the origin of our Sun and the Solar System. In particular, analyzing the emission and absorption lines from molecules is a…
We use UV measurements of interstellar CO towards nearby stars to calculate the density in the diffuse molecular clouds containing the molecules responsible for the observed absorption. Chemical models and recent calculations of the…
We develop a detailed chemical model for the starless cores of strongly magnetized molecular clouds, with the ambipolar diffusion-driven dynamic evolution of the clouds coupled to the chemistry through ion abundances. We concentrate on two…
Radiative transfer plays a major role in the process of star formation. Many simulations of gravitational collapse of a cold gas cloud followed by the formation of a protostellar core use a grey treatment of radiative transfer coupled to…
A multi-transition 3$ $mm molecular line single-pointing and mapping survey was carried out towards 29 massive star-forming cores in order to search for the signature of inward motions. Up to seven different transitions, optically thick…
Supernova shocks into dense molecular cores in IC 443 (clumps B, C, and G) and 3C 391 were observed using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy and complemented by archival data from the Herschel Space Observatory. The pure…
We present semi-analytical similarity solutions for the inside-out, expansion-wave collapse of initially virialized gas clouds with non-isothermal equations of state. Results are given for the family of negative-index polytropes, but we…
We investigate the chemical evolution of a forming molecular cloud behind an interstellar shock wave. We conduct three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations of the converging flow of atomic gas, including a simple chemical network…
Polytropic models are reasonably successful in acounting for the observed features of molecular clouds. Multi-pressure polytropes include the various pressure components that are important in molecular clouds, whereas composite polytropes…
Fully sampled degree-scale maps of the 13CO 2-1 and CO 4-3 transitions toward three members of the Lupus Molecular Cloud Complex - Lupus I, III, and IV - trace the column density and temperature of the molecular gas. Comparison with IR…
Self-similar solutions provide good descriptions for the gravitational collapse of spherical clouds or stars when the gas obeys a polytropic equation of state, $p=K\rho^\gamma$ (with $\gamma\le 4/3$). We study the behaviors of nonradial…
We have investigated the time scale for formation of molecular clouds by examining the conversion of HI to H2 using a time-dependent model. H2 formation on dust grains and cosmic ray and photo destruction are included in one-dimensional…
We present synthetic Hi and CO observations of a simulation of decaying turbulence in the thermally bistable neutral medium. We first present the simulation, with clouds initially consisting of clustered clumps. Self-gravity causes these…
We present a wide-field $(60\arcmin \times 30\arcmin)$ study of a dense region within the Polaris Flare, hereafter referred to as the `Polaris molecular cloud', using $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, and C$^{18}$O ($J=1-0$) observations at $20\arcsec$…
We used the KOSMA 3m telescope to map the core 7'x5' of the Galactic massive star forming region W3Main in the two fine structure lines of atomic carbon and four mid-J transitions of CO and 13CO. The maps are centered on the luminous…