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| EPoS Contribution |
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Physical and chemical properties during high-mass star formation
Caroline Gieser MPIA, Heidelberg, DE | |
| During high-mass star formation, fragmentation takes place on various spatial scales from giant molecular clouds down to disk scales. At the earliest evolutionary stages, high-mass protostars are still deeply embedded within their parental molecular cloud and can be studied best at high spatial resolution with interferometers at mm wavelengths. The IRAM/NOEMA large program "CORE" allows us to analyze the physical and chemical properties of a sample of luminous high-mass star-forming regions. The 1 mm dust continuum of the sample shows a large diversity of fragmentation properties. Using the spectral line emission, we are able to determine the physical structure (temperature an density) and molecular content of individual fragmented cores. Even though all regions are classified to harbor high-mass protostellar objects, the molecular content shows a high degree of complexity. By combining the observed core properties, we are able to estimate chemical timescales with the physical-chemical model MUSCLE. We find well-constrained density and temperature profiles in agreement with theoretical predictions. The molecular complexity in the core spectra can be explained by an age spread that is then confirmed by our physical-chemical modeling. The hot molecular cores show the greatest number of emission lines, but we also find evolved cores in which most molecules are destroyed and, thus, the spectra appear line-poor once again. | |
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| Caption: Local chemical variations in IRAS 23033. The contours in the left panel are the NOEMA 1mm continuum with three detected mm cores labeled 1, 2, and 3. The right panel shows spectra extracted from the continuum peak position of the three mm cores in black and an XCLASS fit to the data in red. All fitted molecular lines are indicated by green vertical lines. | |
| Collaborators: H. Beuther, MPIA, DE D. Semenov, MPIA, DE CORE collaboration |
Key publication
Suggested Session: High Mass |