Similarity between the C18O (J=1-0) core mass function and the IMF in the S 140 region

TL;DR

This study maps C18O cores in the S140 region, revealing a core mass function similar to the stellar IMF, supporting the idea that the IMF's power-law shape is established at certain gas densities.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed C18O(J=1-0) core mass function in S140, showing consistency with the IMF and previous studies, and clarifies discrepancies with earlier C18O(J=2-1) results.

Findings

C18O cores have a power-law mass function with index -2.1

Core properties suggest they are gravitationally bound

Results support the IMF shape is set at specific gas densities

Abstract

We present the results of C18O(J=1-0) mapping observations of a 20'x18' area in the Lynds 1204 molecular cloud associated with the Sharpless 2-140 (S140) H II region. The C18O cube (alpha-delta-vLSR) data shows that there are three clumps with sizes of \sim 1 pc in the region. Two of them have peculiar red shifted velocity components at their edges, which can be interpreted as the results of the interaction between the cloud and the Cepheus Bubble. From the C18O cube data, the clumpfind identified 123 C18O cores, which have mean radius, velocity width in FWHM, and LTE mass of 0.36\pm0.07 pc, 0.37\pm0.09 km s-1, and 41\pm29 Msun, respectively. All the cores in S140 are most likely to be gravitationally bound by considering the uncertainty in the C18O abundance. We derived a C18O core mass function (CMF), which shows a power-law-like behavior above a turnover at 30 Msun. The best-fit power-law index of -2.1\pm0.2 is quite consistent with those of the IMF and the C18O CMF in the OMC-1 region by Ikeda & Kitamura (2009). Kramer et al. (1998) estimated the power-law index of -1.65 in S140 from the C18O(J=2-1) data, which is inconsistent with this study. However, the C18O(J=2-1) data are spatially limited to the central part of the cloud and are likely to be biased toward high-mass cores, leading to the flatter CMF. Consequently, this study and our previous one strongly support that the power-law form of the IMF has been already determined at the density of \sim 10^{3-4} cm^{-3}, traced by the C18O(J=1-0) line.