Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Dipen Sahu
Sheng-Yuan Liu
Doug Johnstone
Tie Liu
Neal J. Evans
Naomi Hirano
Kenichi Tatematsu
James Di Francesco
Chin-Fei Lee
Kee-Tae Kim
Somnath Dutta
Shih-Ying Hsu
Shanghuo Li
Qiu-Yi Luo
Patricio Sanhueza
Hsien Shang
Alessio Traficante
Mika Juvela
Chang Won Lee
David J. Eden
Abstract： 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 (proto)stars. Determining the density profile of prestellar cores, therefore provides an important opportunity to gauge the initial conditions of star formation. In this work, we perform rigorous modeling to estimate the density profiles of three nearly spherical prestellar cores among a sample of five highly dense cores detected by our recent observations. We employed multi-scale observational data of the (sub)millimeter dust continuum emission including those obtained by SCUBA-2 on the JCMT with a resolution of ~5600 au and by multiple ALMA observations with a resolution as high as ~480 au. We are able to consistently reproduce the observed multi-scale dust continuum images of the cores with a simple prescribed density profile, which bears an inner region of flat density and a r^-2 profile toward the outer region. By utilizing the peak density and the size of the inner flat region as a proxy for the dynamical stage of the cores, we find that the three modeled cores are most likely unstable and prone to collapse. The sizes of the inner flat regions, as compact as ~500 au, signify them being the highly evolved prestellar cores rarely found to date.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Dipen Sahu
Sheng-Yuan Liu
Tie Liu
Neal J. Evans
Naomi Hirano
Ken'ichi Tatematsu
Chin-Fei Lee
Kee-Tae Kim
Somnath Dutta
Dana Alina
Leonardo Bronfman
Maria Cunningham
David J. Eden
Guido Garay
Paul F. Goldsmith
Jinhua He
Shih-Ying Hsu
Kai-Syun Jhan
Doug Johnstone
Mika Juvela
Abstract： 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 (sub)structures that will seed the formation of a new star or the binary/multiple stellar systems. Characterizing this critical stage of evolution is key to our understanding of star formation. In this work, we report the detection of high density (sub)structures on the thousand-au scale in a sample of dense prestellar cores. Through our recent ALMA observations towards the Orion molecular cloud, we have found five extremely dense prestellar cores, which have centrally concentrated regions $\sim$ 2000 au in size, and several $10^7$ $cm^{-3}$ in average density. Masses of these centrally dense regions are in the range of 0.30 to 6.89 M$_\odot$. {\it For the first time}, our higher resolution observations (0.8$'' \sim $ 320 au) further reveal that one of the cores shows clear signatures of fragmentation; such individual substructures/fragments have sizes of 800 -1700 au, masses of 0.08 to 0.84 M$_\odot$, densities of $2 - 8\times 10^7$ $cm^{-3}$ and separations of $\sim 1200$ au. The substructures are massive enough ($\gtrsim 0.1~M_\odot$) to form young stellar objects and are likely examples of the earliest stage of stellar embryos which can lead to widely ($\sim$ 1200 au) separated multiple systems.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Shih-Ying Hsu
Sheng-Yuan Liu
Tie Liu
Dipen Sahu
Chin-Fei Lee
Kenichi Tatematsu
Kee-Tae Kim
Naomi Hirano
Yao-Lun Yang
Doug Johnstone
Hongli Liu
Mika Juvela
Leonardo Bronfman
Huei-Ru Vivien Chen
Somnath Dutta
David J. Eden
Kai-Syun Jhan
Yi-Jehng Kuan
Chang Won Lee
Jeong-Eun Lee
Abstract： The presence of complex organic molecules (COMs) in the interstellar medium (ISM) is of great interest since it may link to the origin and prevalence of life in the universe. Aiming to investigate the occurrence of COMs and their possible origins, we conducted a chemical census toward a sample of protostellar cores as part of the ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP) project. We report the detection of 11 hot corino sources, which exhibit compact emissions from warm and abundant COMs, among 56 Class 0/I protostellar cores. All the hot corino sources discovered are likely Class 0 and their sizes of the warm region ($>$ 100 K) are comparable to 100 au. The luminosity of the hot corino sources exhibits positive correlations with the total number of methanol and the extent of its emissions. Such correlations are consistent with the thermal desorption picture for the presence of hot corino and suggest that the lower luminosity (Class 0) sources likely have a smaller region with COMs emissions. With the same sample selection method and detection criteria being applied, the detection rates of the warm methanol in the Orion cloud (15/37) and the Perseus cloud (28/50) are statistically similar when the cloud distances and the limited sample size are considered. Observing the same set of COM transitions will bring a more informative comparison between the cloud properties.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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