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The Core Mass Function Across Galactic Environments. III. Massive Protoclusters by O'Neill, Theo J.; Cosentino, Giuliana; Tan, Jonathan C.; Cheng, Yu; Liu, Mengyao is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Core Mass Function Across Galactic Environments. III. Massive Protoclusters about?

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is fundamental for many areas of astrophysics, but its origin remains poorly understood. It may be inherited from the core mass function (CMF) or arise as a result of more chaotic, competitive accretion. Dense, gravitationally bound cores are seen in molecular clouds and some observations have suggested that the CMF is similar in shape to the IMF, though translated to higher masses by a factor of $\sim3$. Here we measure the CMF in 28 dense clumps within 3.5 kpc that are likely to be central regions of massive protoclusters, observed via $1.3\:{\rm{mm}}$ dust continuum emission by the ALMAGAL project. We identify 222 cores using the dendrogram algorithm with masses ranging from 0.04 to $252\:M_{\odot}$. We apply completeness corrections for flux and number recovery, estimated from core insertion and recovery experiments. At higher masses, the final derived CMF is well described by a single power law of the form $dN/d\:{\textrm{log}}\:M\propto\:M^{-\alpha}$ with $\alpha\simeq0.94\pm0.08$. However, we find evidence of a break in this power-law behavior between $\sim5$ and $15\:M_{\odot}$, which is, to our knowledge, the first time such a break

Author

O'Neill, Theo J.; Cosentino, Giuliana; Tan, Jonathan C.; Cheng, Yu; Liu, Mengyao

Published

2021

Language

EN