ALMA Observations of Starless Core Substructure in Ophiuchus

作者:Kirk H*; Dunham M M; Di Francesco J; Johnstone D; Offner S S R; Sadavoy S I; Tobin J J; Arce H G; Bourke T L; Mairs S; Myers P C; Pineda J E; Schnee S; Shirley Y L
来源:Astrophysical Journal, 2017, 838(2): 114.
DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/aa63f8

摘要

Compact substructure is expected to arise in a starless core as mass becomes concentrated in the central region likely to form a protostar. Additionally, multiple peaks may form if fragmentation occurs. We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Cycle 2 observations of 60 starless and protostellar cores in the Ophiuchus molecular cloud. We detect eight compact substructures which are >15 '' from the nearest Spitzer young stellar object. Only one of these has strong evidence for being truly starless after considering ancillary data, e.g., from Herschel and X-ray telescopes. An additional extended emission structure has tentative evidence for starlessness. The number of our detections is consistent with estimates from a combination of synthetic observations of numerical simulations and analytical arguments. This result suggests that a similar ALMA study in the Chamaeleon. I cloud, which detected no compact substructure in starless cores, may be due to the peculiar evolutionary state of cores in that cloud.

  • 出版日期2017-4-1