The initial conditions of star formation VIII: an observational study of the Ophiuchus cloud L1688 and implications for the prestellar core mass function

TL;DR

This study combines archival submillimetre data of the Ophiuchus L1688 cloud to produce a deeper map, revealing a core mass function that closely resembles the stellar initial mass function and varies with environment.

Contribution

It provides the first combined, deeper submillimetre map of L1688, refining the core mass function and its comparison with the stellar IMF, highlighting environmental effects.

Findings

The CMF shows a turnover at 0.1 solar masses.

The CMF shape matches the stellar IMF.

Turnover position varies with environment.

Abstract

We re-analyse all of the archive observations of the Ophiuchus dark cloud L1688 that were carried out with the submillimetre common-user bolometer array (SCUBA) at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). For the first time we put together all of the data that were taken of this cloud at different times to make a deeper map at 850 microns than has ever previously been published. Using this new, deeper map we extract the pre-stellar cores from the data. We use updated values for the distance to the cloud complex, and also for the internal temperatures of the pre-stellar cores to generate an updated core mass function (CMF). This updated CMF is consistent with previous results in so far as they went, but our deeper map gives an improved completeness limit of 0.1 Mo (0.16 Jy), which enables us to show that a turnover exists in the low-mass regime of the CMF. The L1688 CMF shows the same form as the stellar IMF and can be mapped onto the stellar IMF, showing that the IMF is determined at the prestellar core stage. We compare L1688 with the Orion star-forming region and find that the turnover in the L1688 CMF occurs at a mass roughly a factor of two lower than the CMF turnover in Orion. This suggests that the position of the CMF turnover may be a function of environment.