Related papers: Molecular Evolution in Collapsing Prestellar Cores
The isothermal gravitational collapse and fragmentation of a region within a molecular cloud and the subsequent formation of a protostellar cluster is investigated numerically. The clump mass spectrum which forms during the fragmentation…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
We summarize the current status of the turbulent model of star formation in turbulent molecular clouds. In this model, clouds, clumps and cores form a hierarchy of nested density fluctuations caused by the turbulence, and either collapse or…
We have computed the dust temperature distribution to be expected in a pre-protostellar core in the phase prior to the onset of gravitational instability. We have done this in the approximation that the heating of the dust grains is solely…
Seven isolated, nearby low-mass starless molecular cloud cores have been observed as part of the Herschel key program Earliest Phases of Star formation (EPoS). By applying a ray-tracing technique to the obtained continuum emission and…
We calculate the evolution of cloud cores embedded in different envelopes to investigate environmental effects on the mass accretion rate onto protostars. As the initial state, we neglect the magnetic field and cloud rotation, and adopt…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of star formation is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. We review the properties of low-mass dense…
The standard interstellar ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) atoms is $\sim 1.5 \times 10^{-5}$. However, the deuterium fractionation is in fact found to be enhanced, to different degrees, in cold, dark cores, hot cores around massive…
We present some important conclusions from recent calculations pertaining to the collapse of rotating molecular cloud cores with axial symmetry, corresponding to evolution of young stellar objects through classes 0 and begin of class I.…
We aim at characterising dense cores in the clustered environments associated with massive star-forming regions. For this, we present an uniform analysis of VLA NH3(1,1) and (2,2) observations towards a sample of 15 massive star-forming…
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…
We observed the pre-stellar core L1521F in dust emission at 1.2mm and in two transitions each of N2H+, N2D+, C18O, and C17O in order to increase the sample of well studied centrally concentrated and chemically evolved starless cores, likely…
Cold ($\sim$10 K) and dense ($\sim$10$^{5}$ cm$^{-3}$) cores of gas and dust within molecular clouds, known as starless and dynamically evolved prestellar cores, are the birthplaces of low-mass ($M$ $\leq$ few M$_\odot$) stars. As…
[Abridged] We present a molecular survey of the starless cores L1498 and L1517B. These cores have been selected for their relative isolation and close-to-round shape, and they have been observed in a number of lines of 13 molecular species…
The aims of this study are to determine the properties and spatial distribution of dense cores in Ori B9, and to estimate their ages and dynamical timescales. The cloud was mapped in the 870 micron continuum with APEX/LABOCA, and selected…
Understanding the collapse of dense molecular cloud cores to stellar densities and the subsequent evolution of the protostar is of importance to model the feedback effects such an object has on its surrounding environment, as well as…
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…
Sufficiently massive clumps of molecular gas collapse under self-gravity and fragment to spawn a cluster of stars that have a range of masses. We investigate observationally the early stages of formation of a stellar cluster in a massive…
Direct observational measurements of the magnetic field strength in prestellar cores typically find supercritical mass-to-flux ratios, suggesting that the magnetic field is insufficient to prevent gravitational collapse. These measurements…
[abridged] We investigate the velocity structure of protostellar cores that result from non-magnetic numerical models of the gravoturbulent fragmentation of molecular cloud material. A large fraction of the cores analyzed are ``quiescent'',…