Related papers: The Structure of Cold Molecular Cloud Cores
We present the results of a mid-infrared (7 micron) imaging survey of a sample of 24 starless dense cores carried out at an angular resolution of 6 arcsec with the ISOCAM camera aboard the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). The targeted…
The evolution of collapsing metal free protostellar clouds is investigated for various masses and initial conditions. We perform hydrodynamical calculations for spherically symmetric clouds taking account of radiative transfer of the…
The connection between dense gas cores and their infant protostars is key to understanding how stars form in molecular clouds. In this paper we investigate the properties, persistence, and protostellar content of cores that would be…
We have observed the HCO+ J=3-2 line toward 17 starless cores selected from the list of Ward-Thompson et al. (1994). Six of these cores have line asymmetries indicative of collapse. The excess of blue-skewed profiles over red-skewed…
We investigate molecular evolution in a star-forming core that is initially a hydrostatic starless core and collapses to form a low-mass protostar. The results of a one-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics calculation are adopted as a…
As Pr. Th. Henning said at the conference, cold precursors of high-mass stars are now "hot topics". We here propose some observational criteria to identify massive infrared-quiet dense cores which can host the high-mass analogs of Class 0…
In this paper, we review some of the properties of dense molecular cloud cores. The results presented here rely on three-dimensional numerical simulations of isothermal, magnetized, turbulent, and self-gravitating molecular clouds (MCs) in…
Using smoothed particle hydrodynamics in combination with the special-purpose hardware device GRAPE, we follow the fragmentation process and dynamical evolution in the interior of molecular clouds until most of the gas is converted to form…
The infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) G11.11$-$0.12 and G28.34$+$0.06 are two of the best-studied IRDCs in our Galaxy. These two clouds host clumps at different stages of evolution, including a massive dense clump in both clouds that is dark…
The Pipe nebula is a massive, nearby, filamentary dark molecular cloud with a low star-formation efficiency threaded by a uniform magnetic field perpendicular to its main axis. It harbors more than a hundred, mostly quiescent, very…
A sample of 1.3 mm continuum cores in the Dragon infrared dark cloud (also known as G28.37+0.07 or G28.34+0.06) is analyzed statistically. Based on their association with molecular outflows, the sample is divided into protostellar and…
Stars form within molecular clouds but our understanding of this fundamental process remains hampered by the complexity of the physics that drives their evolution. We review our observational and theoretical knowledge of molecular clouds…
We investigate the intrinsic shapes of starless cores in the Orion GMC, using the prestellar core sample of Nutter and Ward-Thompson (2007), which is based on submillimeter SCUBA data. We employ a maximum-likelihood method to reconstruct…
In this paper we present the results of a systematic investigation of an entire population of starless dust cores within a single molecular cloud. Analysis of extinction data shows the cores to be dense objects characterized by a narrow…
Clouds containing molecular dark matter in quantities relevant for star formation may exist in minihaloes of the type of cold dark matter included in many cosmological simulations or in the regions of some galaxies extending far beyond…
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
Among many physical processes involved in star formation, radiation transfer is one of the key processes since it dominantly controls the thermodynamics. Because metallicities control opacities, they are one of the important environmental…
We conduct an analysis of the shapes of molecular cloud cores using recently compiled catalogs of observed axis ratios of individual cores mapped in ammonia or through optical selection. We apply both analytical and statistical techniques…
Planet-forming disks are fundamental objects thought to be inherited from large scale rotation, through the conservation of angular momentum during the collapse of a prestellar dense core. We investigate the possibility for a protostellar…
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…