Evidence for transient clumps and gas chemical evolution in the CS core of L673

Abstract

We present FCRAO maps as well as combined BIMA and FCRAO maps of the high density molecular emission towards the CS core in the L673 region. With the FCRAO telescope, we mapped the emission in the CS(2-1), C34S(2-1), HCO+(1-0), and H13CO+(1-0) lines. The high density molecular emission, which arises from a filamentary structure oriented in the NW-SE direction, shows clear morphological differences for each molecule. We find that HCO+ has an extremely high optical depth, and that the H13CO+ emission is well correlated with submm sources. The BIMA and FCRAO combined maps recover emission from a lot of other structure which was previously undetected or only marginally detected, and show an overall aspect of a filamentary structure connecting several intense clumps. We found a total 15 clumps in our combined data cube, all of them resolved by our angular resolution, with diameters in the 0.03-0.09 pc range. We find a clear segregation between the northern and southern region of the map: the northern section shows the less chemically evolved gas and less massive but more numerous clumps, while the southern region is dominated by the largest and most massive clump, and contains the more evolved gas, as traced by emission of late-time molecules. We find that the derived clump masses are below the virial mass, and that the clumps masses become closer to the virial mass when they get bigger and more massive. This supports the idea that these clumps must be transient, and only the more massive ones have a chance to last long enough to form stars. The clumps we detect are probably in an earlier evolutionary stage than the ``starless cores'' reported recently in the literature. Only the most massive one has properties similar to a ``starless core''.

12 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics; minor revisions after language editing

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