相关论文: An Observational Perspective of Low Mass Dense Cor…
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…
Starless cores represent the initial stage of evolution toward (proto)star formation, and a subset of them, known as prestellar cores, with high density (~ 10^6 cm^-3 or higher) and being centrally concentrated are expected to be embryos of…
Low-mass dense cores represent the state of molecular gas associated with the earliest phases of low-mass star formation. Such cores are called "protostellar" or "starless," depending on whether they do or do not contain compact sources of…
Protostellar core formation is probably much more dynamic, and magnetic fields are probably much less important, than has been previously assumed in the standard model of low-mass star formation. This revised picture has important…
Dense gas in molecular clouds is an important signature of ongoing and future star formation. We identify and track dense cores in the STARFORGE simulations, following the core evolution from birth through dispersal by stellar feedback for…
A brief summary is presented of our current knowledge of the structure of cold molecular cloud cores that do not contain protostars, sometimes known as starless cores. The most centrally condensed starless cores are known as pre-stellar…
The last decade has witnessed significant advances in our observational understanding of the earliest stages of low-mass star formation. The advent of sensitive receivers on large radio telescopes such as the JCMT and IRAM 30m MRT has led…
We have performed survey-type observations in 1 mm continuum and molecular lines toward dense cores (32 prestellar + 7 protostellar) with an average density of $\gtrsim$10$^5$ cm$^{-3}$ in the Taurus molecular clouds using the Atacama Large…
A fundamental issue in star formation is understanding the precise mechanisms leading to the formation of prestellar cores, and their subsequent gravitationally unstable evolution. To address this question, we carefully construct a suite of…
We present a near-infrared extinction study of nine dense cores at evolutionary stages between starless to Class I. Our results show that the density structure of all but one observed cores can be modeled with a single power law rho \propto…
We analyze an ensemble of simulated prestellar cores to facilitate interpretation of structure, kinematics, and lifetime of observed cores. While our theory predicts a "characteristic" density for star formation, it also predicts that the…
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…
We utilize the more than 100 gravitationally-bound dense cores formed in our three-dimensional, turbulent MHD simulations reported in Chen & Ostriker (2015) to analyze structural, kinematic, and magnetic properties of prestellar cores. Our…
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 investigate the formation of protostellar clusters during the collapse of dense molecular cloud cores with a focus on the evolution of potential and kinetic energy, the degree of substructure, and the early phase of mass segregation. Our…
Molecular line observations of starless (prestellar) cores combined with a chemical evolution modeling and radiative transfer calculations are a powerful tool to study the earliest stages of star formation. However, conclusions drawn from…
We use numerical hydrodynamic simulations to investigate prestellar core formation in the dynamic environment of giant molecular clouds, focusing on planar post-shock layers produced by colliding turbulent flows. A key goal is to test how…
In this study, the main goal is to understand the molecular cloud core collapse through the stages of first and second hydrostatic core formation. We investigate the properties of Larson's first and second cores following the evolution of…
Turbulence and magnetic fields are expected to be important for regulating molecular cloud formation and evolution. However, their effects on subparsec to 100 parsec scales, leading to the formation of starless cores, is not well…
The theory of how low mass stars form from the collapse of a dense molecular cloud core has been well-established for decades. Thanks to significant progress in computing and numerical modelling, more physical models have been developed and…