Lack of high-mass pre-stellar cores in the starless MDCs of NGC6334

0539802 - ASÚ 2021 RIV FR eng J - Journal Article
Louvet, F. … Total 9 authors
Lack of high-mass pre-stellar cores in the starless MDCs of NGC6334.
Astronomy & Astrophysics. Roč. 622, February (2019), č. článku A99. ISSN 0004-6361. E-ISSN 1432-0746
Research Infrastructure: EU-ARC.CZ - 90067
Keywords : stars formation * massive * clouds
OECD category: Astronomy (including astrophysics,space science)
Impact factor: 5.636, year: 2019
Method of publishing: Open access
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732282

The aim of the present work is to bring observational constraints at the scale of high-mass cores (similar to 0.03 pc). The nine starless MDCs have the mass reservoir to form high-mass stars according to the criteria by Baldeschi et al. (2017). Three of the starless MDCs are subvirialized with alpha(vir) similar to 0.35, and four MDCs show sign of collapse from their molecular emission lines. ALMA observations show very little fragmentation within the MDCs. Only two of the starless MDCs host compact continuum sources, whose fluxes correspond to <3 M-circle dot fragments. Therefore, the mass reservoir of the MDCs has not yet been accreted onto compact objects, and most of the emission is filtered out by the interferometer. These observations do not support the quasi-static models for high-mass star formation since no high-mass pre-stellar core is found in NGC6334. The competitive accretion models, on the other hand, predict a level of fragmentation much higher than what we observe.

Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0317503