A Hunt for Massive Starless Cores
Shuo Kong (1, 2), Jonathan C. Tan (1, 3), Paola Caselli (4),, Francesco Fontani (5), Mengyao Liu (1), Michael J. Butler (6) ((1) Dept. of, Astronomy, University of Florida, USA, (2) Dept. of Astronomy, Yale, University, USA, (3) Dept. of Physics, University of Florida, USA, (4)

TL;DR
This study uses ALMA observations to identify and analyze over 100 dense, potentially pre-stellar cores in Infrared Dark Clouds, providing insights into the initial conditions for massive star formation.
Contribution
It introduces a new core-finding algorithm and presents the first detailed properties of massive starless core candidates in high-density regions.
Findings
Over 100 N2D+ cores identified.
The most massive core is about 70 solar masses.
Core properties are consistent with virial equilibrium.
Abstract
We carry out an ALMA (3-2) and 1.3~mm continuum survey towards 32 high mass surface density regions in seven Infrared Dark Clouds with the aim of finding massive starless cores, which may be the initial conditions for the formation of massive stars. Cores showing strong (3-2) emission are expected to be highly deuterated and indicative of early, potentially pre-stellar stages of star formation. We also present maps of these regions in ancillary line tracers, including CO(2-1), DCN(3-2) and DCO(3-2). Over 100 cores are identified with our newly developed core-finding algorithm based on connected structures in position-velocity space. The most massive core has (potentially ) and so may be representative of the initial conditions for massive star formation. The existence and dynamical properties of such…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
