Developing an Evolutionary Sequence for the Earliest Stages of Low-mass Star Formation: Results of the ARO-GBT Starless Core Survey

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

Dense starless cores are the earliest observable phase of low-mass star formation. Despite a considerable observational effort over the past decade, a coherent evolutionary sequence has yet to be developed for the incipient stages of star formation. Recent observational evidence suggests that cores with the same central density may be evolving at very different rates, even within the same molecular cloud. The chemical structure of the core is an essential tool for characterizing the physical state and rate of evolution of the core. Chemical processes such as the abundance ratio of early-time versus late-time molecular species, the amount of freeze-out of gas phase species, and the degree of deuteration may be used to elucidate the evolutionary state. We present the results from a chemical mapping survey of 25 nearby (D < 400 pc) low-mass starless cores for which radiative transfer models of the dust continuum emission, mapped by SCUBA at submillimeter wavelengths, have constrained the physical structure (n(r), T(r), I_ISRF) of the cores. The cores were observed with the Arizona Radio Observatory's 10-m and 12-m telescopes and the Green Bank 100-m telescope in 10 transitions: NH3 (1,1) and (2,2), o-NH2D 1_11-1_01, CCS 1_2 - 2_1, C3S 4-3, HC5N 9-8, HC7N 21-20, C18O 2-1, C17O 2-1, and p-H2CO 1_01-0_00. The chemical, physical, and kinematical states of these cores are compared to develop an evolutionary sequence.

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