We present a new assessment of the ability of Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) to form massive stars and clusters. This is done by comparison with an empirical mass-size threshold for massive star ...formation (MSF). We establish m(r)>870 M (r/pc)1.33 as a novel approximate MSF limit, based on clouds with and without MSF. Many IRDCs, if not most, fall short of this threshold. Without significant evolution, such clouds are unlikely MSF candidates. This provides a first quantitative assessment of the small number of IRDCs evolving toward MSF. IRDCs below this limit might still form stars and clusters of up to intermediate mass, though (like, e.g., the Ophiuchus and Perseus Molecular Clouds). Nevertheless, a major fraction of the mass contained in IRDCs might reside in few 102 clouds sustaining MSF.
Whether or not molecular clouds and embedded cloud fragments are stable against collapse is of utmost importance for the study of the star formation process. Only "supercritical" cloud fragments are ...able to collapse and form stars. The virial parameter alpha = M sub(vir)/M, which compares the virial mass to the actual mass, provides one way to gauge stability against collapse. Supercritical cloud fragments are characterized by alpha lap 2, as indicated by a comprehensive stability analysis considering perturbations in pressure and density gradients. Past research has suggested that virial parameters alpha gap 2 prevail in clouds. This would suggest that collapse toward star formation is a gradual and relatively slow process and that magnetic fields are not needed to explain the observed cloud structure. Here, we review a range of very recent observational studies that derive virial parameters Lt2 and compile a catalog of 1325 virial parameter estimates. Low values of alpha are in particular observed for regions of high-mass star formation (HMSF). These observations may argue for a more rapid and violent evolution during collapse. This would enable "competitive accretion" in HMSF, constrain some models of "monolithic collapse," and might explain the absence of high-mass starless cores. Alternatively, the data could point at the presence of significant magnetic fields ~1 mG at high gas densities. We examine to what extent the derived observational properties might be biased by observational or theoretical uncertainties. For a wide range of reasonable parameters, our conclusions appear to be robust with respect to such biases.
Emission from high-dipole moment molecules such as HCN allows determination of the density in molecular clouds, and is often considered to trace the "dense" gas available for star formation. We ...assess the importance of electron excitation in various environments. The ratio of the rate coefficients for electrons and H2 molecules, 105 for HCN, yields the requirements for electron excitation to be of practical importance if and , where the numerical factors reflect the critical values and . This indicates that in regions where a large fraction of carbon is ionized, will be large enough to make electron excitation significant. The situation is in general similar for other "high-density tracers," including HCO+, CN, and CS. But there are significant differences in the critical electron fractional abundance, , defined by the value required for equal effect from collisions with H2 and e−. Electron excitation is, for example, unimportant for CO and C+. Electron excitation may be responsible for the surprisingly large spatial extent of emission from dense gas tracers in some molecular clouds. The enhanced estimates for HCN abundances and HCN/CO and HCN/HCO+ ratios observed in the nuclear regions of luminous galaxies may be in part a result of electron excitation of high dipole moment tracers. The importance of electron excitation will depend on detailed models of the chemistry, which may well be non-steady state and non-static.
Trends observed in galaxies, such as the Gao & Solomon relation, suggest a linear relationship between the star formation rate and the mass of dense gas available for star formation. Validation of ...such trends requires the establishment of reliable methods to trace the dense gas in galaxies. One frequent assumption is that the HCN (J = 1–0) transition is unambiguously associated with gas at H2 densities ≫ 104 cm-3. If so, the mass of gas at densities ≫ 104 cm-3 could be inferred from the luminosity of this emission line, LHCN (1–0). Here we use observations of the Orion A molecular cloud to show that the HCN (J = 1–0) line traces much lower densities ~ 103 cm-3 in cold sections of this molecular cloud, corresponding to visual extinctions AV ≈ 6 mag. We also find that cold and dense gas in a cloud like Orion produces too little HCN emission to explain LHCN (1–0) in star forming galaxies, suggesting that galaxies might contain a hitherto unknown source of HCN emission. In our sample of molecules observed at frequencies near 100 GHz (also including 12CO, 13CO, C18O, CN, and CCH), N2H+ is the only species clearly associated with relatively dense gas.
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 even at 70 and 100 μm. Such seemingly quiescent massive dense clumps have been speculated to harbor cores that are precursors of high-mass stars and clusters. We observed these two “prestellar” regions at 1 mm with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) with the aim of characterizing the nature of such cores. We show that the clumps fragment into several low- to high-mass cores within the filamentary structure of the enveloping cloud. However, while the overall physical properties of the clump may indicate a starless phase, we find that both regions host multiple outflows. The most massive core though 70 μm dark in both clumps is clearly associated with compact outflows. Such low-luminosity, massive cores are potentially the earliest stage in the evolution of a massive protostar. We also identify several outflow features distributed in the large environment around the most massive core. We infer that these outflows are being powered by young, low-mass protostars whose core mass is below our detection limit. These findings suggest that low-mass protostars have already formed or are coevally formed at the earliest phase of high-mass star formation.
Atlas of Cosmic-Ray-induced Astrochemistry Albertsson, Tobias; Kauffmann, Jens; Menten, Karl M.
Astrophysical journal/The Astrophysical journal,
11/2018, Letnik:
868, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Cosmic rays are the primary initiators of interstellar chemistry, and getting a better understanding of the varying impact they have on the chemistry of interstellar clouds throughout the Milky Way ...will not only expand our understanding of interstellar medium chemistry in our own galaxy, but also aid in extra-galactic studies. This work uses the ALCHEMIC astrochemical modeling code to perform numerical simulations of chemistry for a range of ionization rates. We study the impact of variations in the cosmic-ray ionization rate on molecular abundances under idealized conditions given by constant temperatures and a fixed density of 104 cm−3. As part of this study we examine whether observations of molecular abundances can be used to infer the cosmic-ray ionization rate in such a simplified case. We find that intense cosmic-ray ionization results in molecules, in particular the large and complex ones, being largely dissociated, and the medium becoming increasingly atomic. Individual species have limitations in their use as probes of the cosmic-ray ionization rate. At early times (<1 Myr) ions such as and HOC+ make the best probes, while at later times, neutral species such as HNCO and SO stand out, in particular due to their large abundance variations. It is, however, by combining species into pairs that we find the best probes. Molecular ions such as combined with different neutral species can provide probe candidates that outmatch individual species, in particular , , HOC+/O, and HOC+/HNCO. These still have limitations to their functional range, but are more functional as probes than as individual species.
Context. The Galactic center is the closest region where we can study star formation under extreme physical conditions like those in high-redshift galaxies. Aims. We measure the temperature of the ...dense gas in the central molecular zone (CMZ) and examine what drives it. Methods. We mapped the inner 300 pc of the CMZ in the temperature-sensitive J = 3–2 para-formaldehyde (p - H2CO) transitions. We used the 32,1−22,0/ 30,3−20,2 line ratio to determine the gas temperature in n ~ 104−105 cm-3 gas. We have produced temperature maps and cubes with 30′′ and 1 km s-1 resolution and published all data in FITS form. Results. Dense gas temperatures in the Galactic center range from ~60 K to >100 K in selected regions. The highest gas temperatures TG> 100 K are observed around the Sgr B2 cores, in the extended Sgr B2 cloud, the 20 km s-1 and 50 km s-1 clouds, and in “The Brick” (G0.253+0.016). We infer an upper limit on the cosmic ray ionization rate ζCR< 10-14s-1. Conclusions. The dense molecular gas temperature of the region around our Galactic center is similar to values found in the central regions of other galaxies, in particular starburst systems. The gas temperature is uniformly higher than the dust temperature, confirming that dust is a coolant in the dense gas. Turbulent heating can readily explain the observed temperatures given the observed line widths. Cosmic rays cannot explain the observed variation in gas temperatures, so CMZ dense gas temperatures are not dominated by cosmic ray heating. The gas temperatures previously observed to be high in the inner ~75 pc are confirmed to be high in the entire CMZ.
We investigate the effect of line-of-sight temperature variations and noise on two commonly used methods to determine dust properties from dust-continuum observations of dense cores. One method ...employs a direct fit to a modified blackbody spectral energy distribution (SED); the other involves a comparison of flux ratios to an analytical prediction. Fitting fluxes near the SED peak produces inaccurate temperature and dust spectral index estimates due to the line-of-sight temperature (and density) variations. Longer wavelength fluxes in the Rayleigh-Jeans part of the spectrum ( 600 mm for typical cores) may more accurately recover the spectral index, but both methods are very sensitive to noise. The temperature estimate approaches the density-weighted temperature, or 'column temperature,' of the source as short wavelength fluxes are excluded. An inverse temperature-spectral index correlation naturally results from SED fitting, due to the inaccurate isothermal assumption, as well as noise uncertainties. We show that above some 'threshold' temperature, the temperatures estimated through the flux ratio method can be highly inaccurate. In general, observations with widely separated wavelengths, and including shorter wavelengths, result in higher threshold temperatures; such observations thus allow for more accurate temperature estimates of sources with temperatures less than the threshold temperature. When only three fluxes are available, a constrained fit, where the spectral index is fixed, produces less scatter in the temperature estimate when compared to the estimate from the flux ratio method.
We report results of a project to map HCN and emission toward a sample of molecular clouds in the inner Galaxy, all containing dense clumps that are actively engaged in star formation. We compare ...these two molecular line tracers with millimeter continuum emission and extinction, as inferred from 13CO, as tracers of dense gas in molecular clouds. The fraction of the line luminosity from each tracer that comes from the dense gas, as measured by mag, varies substantially from cloud to cloud. In all cases, a substantial fraction (in most cases, the majority) of the total luminosity arises in gas below the mag threshold and outside the region of strong millimeter continuum emission. Measurements of toward other galaxies will likely be dominated by such gas at lower surface densities. Substantial, even dominant, contributions to the total line luminosity can arise in gas with densities typical of the cloud as a whole (n ∼ 100 cm−3). Defining the dense clump from the HCN or emission itself, similarly to previous studies, leads to a wide range of clump properties, with some being considerably larger and less dense than in previous studies. HCN and have a similar ability to trace dense gas for the clouds in this sample. For the two clouds with low virial parameters, 13CO is definitely a worse tracer of the dense gas, but for the other four, it is equally good (or bad) at tracing dense gas.
The Survey of Water and Ammonia in the Galactic Center (SWAG) covers the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Milky Way at frequencies between 21.2 and 25.4 GHz obtained at the Australia Telescope ...Compact Array at ∼0.9 pc spatial and ∼2.0 km s−1 spectral resolution. In this paper, we present data on the inner ∼250 pc (1 4) between Sgr C and Sgr B2. We focus on the hyperfine structure of the metastable ammonia inversion lines (J, K) = (1, 1)-(6, 6) to derive column density, kinematics, opacity, and kinetic gas temperature. In the CMZ molecular clouds, we find typical line widths of 8-16 km s−1 and extended regions of optically thick (τ > 1) emission. Two components in kinetic temperature are detected at 25-50 K and 60-100 K, both being significantly hotter than the dust temperatures throughout the CMZ. We discuss the physical state of the CMZ gas as traced by ammonia in the context of the orbital model by Kruijssen et al. that interprets the observed distribution as a stream of molecular clouds following an open eccentric orbit. This allows us to statistically investigate the time dependencies of gas temperature, column density, and line width. We find heating rates between ∼50 and ∼100 K Myr−1 along the stream orbit. No strong signs of time dependence are found for column density or line width. These quantities are likely dominated by cloud-to-cloud variations. Our results qualitatively match the predictions of the current model of tidal triggering of cloud collapse, orbital kinematics, and the observation of an evolutionary sequence of increasing star formation activity with orbital phase.
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