GBT21B-228

CO freeze-out across a filamentary dense cloud forming a quadruple system

Abstract

In prestellar environments, the disappearance of CO from the gas phase (CO freeze-out) is an important chemical process and an ideal observational tool to investigate evolutionary trends and collapse timescales. While past studies have focused on the central ~0.1 pc regions of mostly isolated prestellar cores, this chemical tool has not been fully exploited to investigate high-density filamentary structures, the preferred site of prestellar and protostellar activity. We propose to map C17O (1-0), the most robust tracer of CO freeze-out, towards a well-studied dense cloud with filamentary structure containing multiple condensations. The observations will uncover variations in the evolutionary states along the filamentary structures, shedding light on their formation and fragmentation process. Moreover, the observations will also grant us with a constraint on the ionization properties of the gas and its spatial variations across the substructures, with implications for the role of magnetic fields and MHD processes at these scales. Finally, these high-resolution and wide observations will reveal the motion of the fresh (chemically young) gas, capturing additional accretion routes. Together, the GBT-Argus observations are a new window into the dynamical processes at scales from ~0.35 pc down to 2,000 au, for a prototypical low-mass star formation environment.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Anika Schmiedeke	Green Bank Observatory
Mara Jos Maureira *	Yale University; Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Jaime Pineda	Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Paola Caselli	Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik; Leeds, University of
Dominique Segura-Cox	Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of; Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik; Rochester, University of; Texas at Austin, University of

* indicates the PI