TWO MASS DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE L 1641 MOLECULAR CLOUDS: THE HERSCHEL CONNECTION OF DENSE CORES AND FILAMENTS IN ORION A
- Department of Astrophysics, University of Athens, Astronomy and Mechanics, Faculty of Physics, Panepistimiopolis, 15784 Zografos, Athens (Greece)
- Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (INAF-IAPS), via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, I-00133 Roma (Italy)
- Laboratoire AIM, CEA/IRFU CNRS/INSU Université Paris Diderot, Paris-Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
- Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8 (Canada)
- National Research Council Canada, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7 (Canada)
- IAS, CNRS (UMR 8617), Université Paris-Sud, Bâtiment 121, F-91400 Orsay (France)
We present Herschel survey maps of the L 1641 molecular clouds in Orion A. We extracted both the filaments and dense cores in the region. We identified which of the dense sources are proto- or pre-stellar, and studied their association with the identified filaments. We find that although most (71%) of the pre-stellar sources are located on filaments there, is still a significant fraction of sources not associated with such structures. We find that these two populations (on and off the identified filaments) have distinctly different mass distributions. The mass distribution of the sources on the filaments is found to peak at 4 M {sub ☉} and drives the shape of the core mass function (CMF) at higher masses, which we fit with a power law of the form dN/dlogM∝M {sup –1.4±0.4}. The mass distribution of the sources off the filaments, on the other hand, peaks at 0.8 M {sub ☉} and leads to a flattening of the CMF at masses lower than ∼4 M {sub ☉}. We postulate that this difference between the mass distributions is due to the higher proportion of gas that is available in the filaments, rather than in the diffuse cloud.
- OSTI ID:
- 22215366
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 777, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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