Infrared Dark Cloud Cores in the SCUBA Legacy Catalogue

TL;DR

This study investigates Infrared Dark Cloud cores using the SCUBA Legacy Catalogue, identifying their properties, evolutionary stages, and predicting their observability in upcoming surveys.

Contribution

It provides a uniform analysis of IRDC cores at 850um, linking their column densities, star formation activity, and evolutionary stages, and offers predictions for future survey detections.

Findings

Detected 154 IRDC cores at 850um, 51 not detected.

Higher column densities in detected cores (mean 1.7x10^22 cm^-2).

Estimated quiescent phase lifetime of IRDCs as a few 10^3-10^4 years.

Abstract

We present an investigation of candidate Infrared Dark Cloud cores as identified by Simon et al. (2006) located within the SCUBA Legacy Catalogue. After applying a uniform noise cut to the Catalogue data we identify 154 Infrared Dark Cloud cores that were detected at 850um and 51 cores that were not. We derive column densities for each core from their 8um extinction and find that the IRDCs detected at 850um have higher column densities (a mean of 1.7x10^22 cm-2) compared to those cores not detected at 850um (a mean of 1.0x10^22 cm-2). Combined with sensitivity estimates, we suggest that the cores not detected at 850um are low mass, low column density and low temperature cores that are below the sensitivity limit of SCUBA at 850um. For a subsample of the cores detected at 850um those contained within the MIPSGAL area) we find that two thirds are associated with 24um sources. Cores not associated with 24um emission are either ``starless'' IRDC cores that perhaps have yet to form stars, or contain low mass YSOs below the MIPSGAL detection limit. We see that those ``starless'' IRDC cores and the IRDC cores associated with 24um emission are drawn from the same column density population and are of similar mass. If we then assume the cores without 24um embedded sources are at an earlier evolutionary stage to cores with embedded objects we derive a statistical lifetime for the quiescent phase of a few 10^3-10^4 years. Finally, we make conservative predictions for the number of observed IRDCs that will be observed by the Apex Telescope Galactic Plane Survey (ATLASGAL), the Herschel Infrared Galactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL), the JCMT Galactic Plane Survey (JPS) and the SCUBA-2 ``All Sky'' Survey (SASSy).