GBT22B-180

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 constrain physical quantities related to the dynamics of prestellar cores. 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, within which most pre- and protostellar sources are found. We propose to complete our GBT-Argus program mapping C17O for such environment. Improving the sensitivity is essential to probe whether there is evidence of large CO freeze-out variations towards filamentary structures containing multiple condensations, shedding light on their evolutionary stages. Moreover, these 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 chemically younger (or less CO depleted) gas, capturing additional accretion channels. Together, the GBT-Argus observations are a new window into the dynamics 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
Dominique Segura-Cox	Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of; Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik; Rochester, University of; Texas at Austin, University of
Paola Caselli	Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik; Leeds, University of
Jaime Pineda	Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Mara Jos Maureira *	Yale University; Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik

* indicates the PI