Chemical evolution of the HC3N and N2H+ molecules in dense cores of the Vela C giant molecular cloud complex

TL;DR

This study investigates the chemical evolution of HC3N and N2H+ molecules in dense cores of the Vela C molecular cloud, revealing their potential as tracers of different evolutionary stages and identifying a possible abundance ratio threshold for star formation activity.

Contribution

It provides observational evidence linking molecular abundance ratios to chemical evolution stages in the Vela C cloud, highlighting the potential of HC3N and N2H+ as chemical tracers.

Findings

N2H+/HC3N ratio tends to be higher in star-forming regions.

HC3N may trace chemically young gas, while N2H+ traces later stages.

A ratio of ~1.4 might distinguish star-forming from starless cores.

Abstract

We have observed the HC3N (J=10-9) and N2H+ (J=1-0) lines toward the Vela C molecular clouds with the Mopra 22 m telescope to study chemical characteristics of dense cores. The intensity distributions of these molecules are similar to each other at an angular resolution of 53", corresponding to 0.19 pc suggesting that these molecules trace the same dense cores. We identified 25 local peaks in the velocity-integrated intensity maps of the HC3N and/or N2H+ emission. Assuming LTE conditions, we calculated the column densities of these molecules and found a tendency that N2H+/HC3N abundance ratio seems to be low in starless regions while it seems to be high in star-forming regions, similar to the tendencies in the NH3/CCS, NH3/HC3N, and N2H+/CCS abundance ratios found in previous studies of dark clouds and the Orion A GMC. We suggest that carbon chain molecules, including HC3N, may trace chemically young molecular gas and N-bearing molecules, such as N2H+, may trace later stages of chemical evolution in the Vela C molecular clouds. It may be possible that the N2H+/HC3N abundance ratio of ~ 1.4 divides the star-forming and starless peaks in the Vela C, although it is not as clear as those in NH3/CCS, NH3/HC3N, and N2H+/CCS for the Orion A GMC. This less clear separation may be caused by our lower spatial resolution or the misclassification of star-forming and starless peaks due to the larger distance of the Vela C. It might be also possible that the HC3N (J=10-9) transition is not a good chemical evolution tracer compared with CCS (J=4-3 and 7-6) transitions.