Chemistry and dynamics of the prestellar core L1544

TL;DR

This study uses advanced hydrodynamical and chemical modeling to investigate the infall velocity of the prestellar core L1544, finding chemistry has limited impact on velocity but significantly affects core lifetime estimates.

Contribution

It demonstrates that detailed chemical networks do not significantly alter infall velocities but are crucial for accurate core lifetime predictions in prestellar core models.

Findings

Infall velocity is nearly independent of chemical network complexity.

Higher observed infall velocities may indicate more evolved cores or higher densities.

Simplified chemical networks lead to underestimating core lifetime.

Abstract

We aim to quantify the effect of chemistry on the infall velocity in the prestellar core L1544. Previous observational studies have found evidence for double-peaked line profiles for the rotational transitions of several molecules, which cannot be accounted for with the models presently available for the physical structure of the source, without ad hoc up-scaling of the infall velocity. We ran one-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the collapse of a core with L1544-like properties (in terms of mass and outer radius), using a state-of-the-art chemical model with a very large chemical network combined with an extensive description of molecular line cooling, determined via radiative transfer simulations, with the aim of determining whether these expansions of the simulation setup (as compared to previous models) can lead to a higher infall velocity. After running a series of simulations where the simulation was sequentially simplified, we found that the infall velocity is almost independent of the size of the chemical network or the approach to line cooling. We conclude that chemical evolution does not have a large impact on the infall velocity, and that the higher infall velocities that are implied by observations may be the result of the core being more dynamically evolved than what is now thought, or alternatively the average density in the simulated core is too low. However, chemistry does have a large influence on the lifetime of the core, which varies by about a factor of two across the simulations and grows longer when the chemical network is simplified. Therefore, although the model is subject to several sources of uncertainties, the present results clearly indicate that the use of a small chemical network leads to an incorrect estimate of the core lifetime, which is naturally a critical parameter for the development of chemical complexity in the precollapse phase.