Related papers: Molecular Evolution in Collapsing Prestellar Cores
We present new results on CO depletion in a sample of nearby pre-stellar cores, based on observations of the millimeter C17O and C18O lines and the 1.3 mm dust emission with the IRAM 30m telescope. In most cases, the distribution of CO is…
Observations of low mass protostars which probe small enough size scales to be within likely CO depletion regions show the highest [NH2D]/[NH3] ratios yet measured, of 4--33%. These molecular D/H ratios are higher than those measured on…
Determining the structure of and the velocity field in prestellar cores is essential to understanding protostellar evolution.} {We have observed the dense prestellar cores L 1544 and L 183 in the $N = 1 \to 0$ rotational transition of CN…
Understanding the depletion of heavy elements is a fundamental step towards determining the structure of pre-protostellar cores just prior to collapse. We study the dependence of the NO abundance on position in the pre-protostellar cores…
During hierarchical clustering, smaller masses generally collapse earlier than larger masses and so are denser on the average. The core of a small mass halo could be dense enough to resist disruption and survive undigested, when it is…
We have undertaken a survey of N2H+ and N2D+ towards 31 low-mass starless cores using the IRAM 30m telescope. Our main objective has been to determine the abundance ratio of N2D+ and N2H+ towards the nuclei of these cores and thus to obtain…
We have measured the deuterium fractionation (through the column density ratio N(N2D+)/N(N2H+)) and the CO depletion factor (ratio between expected and observed CO abundance) in a sample of 10 high-mass protostellar candidates, in order to…
We quantify if the chemical abundance gradients given by a dynamical model of core collapse including time-dependent changes in density and temperature differ greatly from abundances derived from static models, where the density and…
Prestellar cores are self-gravitating dense and cold structures within molecular clouds where future stars are born. They are expected, at the stage of transitioning to the protostellar phase, to harbor centrally concentrated dense…
The low-mass star formation evolutionary sequence is relatively well-defined both from observations and theoretical considerations. The first hydrostatic core is the first protostellar equilibrium object that is formed during the star…
The isothermal dynamical evolution of a clumpy and turbulent molecular cloud region and its fragmentation into a protostellar cluster is investigated numerically. The effect of different initial density and velocity distributions, generated…
High levels of deuterium fractionation of $\rm N_2H^+$ (i.e., $\rm D_{frac}^{N_2H^+} \gtrsim 0.1$) are often observed in pre-stellar cores (PSCs) and detection of $\rm N_2D^+$ is a promising method to identify elusive massive PSCs. However,…
We present measurements of the mean dense core lifetimes in numerical simulations of magnetically supercritical, turbulent, isothermal molecular clouds, in order to compare with observational determinations. "Prestellar" lifetimes (given as…
The distribution of protostar masses is studied for core-environment systems whose duration of infall follows a waiting-time distribution. Each core-environment system has a continuous density profile with no barrier to mass flow. The core…
Theory predicts, and observations confirm, that the column density ratio of a molecule containing D to its counterpart containing H can be used as an evolutionary tracer in the low-mass star formation process. Since it remains unclear if…
Aims. We investigate the role of selective dissociation in the process of star formation by comparing the physical parameters of protostellar-prestellar cores and the distinct regions with the CO isotope distributions in photodissociation…
Clouds of high infrared extinction are promising sites of massive star/cluster formation. A large number of cloud cores discovered in recent years allows investigation of possible evolutionary sequence among cores in early phases. We have…
We present the first study of the relationship between the column density distribution of molecular clouds within nearby Galactic spiral arms and their evolutionary status as measured from their stellar content. We analyze a sample of 195…
We investigate protostellar collapse of molecular cloud cores by numerical simulations, taking into account turbulence and magnetic fields. By using the adaptive mesh refinement technique, the collapse is followed over a wide dynamic range…
In our SCUBA survey of Perseus, we find that the fraction of protostellar cores increases towards higher masses and the most massive cores are all protostellar. In this paper we consider the possible explanations of this apparent mass…