Cold Dark Clouds: The Initial Conditions for Star Formation

By E. Bergin, M. Tafalla. 2007

787 citations recorded by the source corpus.

AbstractCold dark clouds are nearby members of the densest and coldest phase in the Galactic interstellar medium, and represent the most accessible sites where stars like our Sun are currently being born. In this review we discuss recent progress in their study, including the newly discovered IR dark clouds that are likely precursors to stellar clusters. At large scales, dark clouds present filamentary mass distributions with motions dominated by supersonic turbulence. At small, subparsec scales, a population of subsonic starless cores provides a unique glimpse of the conditions prior to stellar birth. Recent studies of starless cores reveal a combination of simple physical properties together with a complex chemical structure dominated by the freeze-out of molecules onto cold dust grains. Elucidating this combined structure is both an observational and theoretical challenge whose solution will bring us closer to understanding how molecular gas condenses to form stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fcf5920afdf7b087844d4ed6014240d44f6cf9cd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

In Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

Citations in the corpus

Terahertz Spectroscopy for Astronomy: From Comets to Cosmology (2011, background): “they constitute important spectroscopic probes of the velocity field in dark, starless, and collapsing cloud cores [53] (Fig.”
Global hierarchical collapse in molecular clouds. Towards a comprehensive scenario (2019, background): “The first two of these properties are often interpreted as evidence of quasi-static contraction in the cores, as proposed by Shu (1977, herafter S77), although it has been difficult to reconcile them with the third property (e.g., Lee et al. 2001; Bergin & Tafalla 2007).”
THE STICKINESS OF MICROMETER-SIZED WATER-ICE PARTICLES (2014, background): “As all astrophysically relevant water-ice temperatures in molecular clouds and protoplanetary disks are well below 210 K (Bergin & Tafalla 2007; Lecar et al. 2006), laboratory experiments on the collision and sticking behavior of water-ice particles should be done at temperatures below 210 K to…”
FILAMENTARY ACCRETION FLOWS IN THE EMBEDDED SERPENS SOUTH PROTOCLUSTER (2013, background): “All three of these molecular species are expected to be good tracers of dense gas (see, e.g., the discussion in Sanhueza et al 2012; Bergin & Tafalla 2007), which is confirmed by their good correspondence to the dust emission.”
H$_2$ formation on interstellar dust grains: the viewpoints of theory, experiments, models and observations (2017, background): “…Hollenbach and Tielens (1999) , (b) Parmar et al. (1991) , (c) Köhler et al. (2014a ), (d) Habart et al. (2005a ), (e) Habart et al. (2011) , (f) Bergin and Tafalla (2007) , (g) Arab et al. (2012) , (h) Planck Collaboration et al. (2014) , (i) Hocuk et al. (2016) , (j) Snow et al. (2008) , (k)…”
Protoplanetary Disks and Their Evolution (2011, background): “During the passage through cold dark clouds to protoplanetary disks, molecules freeze out from the gas phase onto dust grain surfaces producing icy mantles (Bergin & Tafalla 2007) and the grains collisionally agglomerate (Blum & Wurm 2008).”
Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way (2015, background): “…Falgarone 2012, Kennicutt & Evans 2012, Krumholz 2014); interstellar turbulence (Scalo & Elmegreen 2004, Elmegreen & Scalo 2004); cold, dark clouds (Bergin & Tafalla 2007); nearby galaxies (Fukui & Kawamura 2010); magnetic fields (Crutcher 2012); and the CO-to-H2 conversion factor (Bolatto et al.…”
Dispersal of molecular clouds by ionizing radiation (2012, background): “However, what we do know is that on scales from the typical prestellar core size of ∼ 0.1 pc, up to ∼ 100 pc (Bergin & Tafalla 2007), molecular clouds subscribe to a statistically self-similar fractal structure (Stutzki et al. 1998; Elmegreen & Falgarone 1996; Falgarone et al. 1991).”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, methodology): “The final efficiency will depend on how long the cloud continues to form stars before being disrupted; cloud lifetimes are poorly constrained (McKee & Ostriker 2007; Bergin & Tafalla 2007), and they may differ for clouds where massive stars form.”
NON-IDEAL MHD EFFECTS AND MAGNETIC BRAKING CATASTROPHE IN PROTOSTELLAR DISK FORMATION (2011, background): “One may also be concerned that our adopted initial density distribution is uniform, whereas the observed pre-stellar cores are centrally condensed (Bergin & Tafalla 2007).”
The birth of a galaxy – II. The role of radiation pressure (2012, background): “Here 〈Eγ〉 is the average ionising photon energy, and αB ≈ 2.5× 10 −13 cm3 s−1 is the Case B recombination rate at T = 104 K. Molecular complexes are very clumpy and, in the Galactic plane, they have an average density in the range of 102 − 104 cm−3 (Bergin & Tafalla 2007).”
WATER, O2, AND ICE IN MOLECULAR CLOUDS (2008, background): “…toward W51 and W49 where H2O 557 GHz is seen 16 In some cases, CO is frozen on grains in very high AV regions at cloud centers; see, for example, Bergin & Tafalla (2007) for a review of the observations. in absorption, are characterized by G0 ∼ 1–10, n ∼ 100 cm−3, and AV ∼ 1–5 (these are…”
25 Years of Self-Organized Criticality: Solar and Astrophysics (2014, background): “Indeed, fractal and self-fimilar patterns have been observed in the Milky Way from dense cores to giant molecular clouds in a range of 0.1 < L < 100 pc (Elmegreen and Scalo 2004; Bergin and Tafalla 2007), as well as in star-forming regions in the Andromeda nebula M33 (Sanchez et al. 2010).”
The ATLASGAL survey: a catalog of dust condensations in the Galactic plane (2013, methodology): “Here we aim therefore to extract the properties of compact sources with typical size-scales of 0.4 pc to 1 pc, commonly noted as clumps (e.g. Bergin & Tafalla 2007; Motte & Hennebelle 2009).”
FILAMENTARY STRUCTURE OF STAR-FORMING COMPLEXES (2009, methodology): “The spheroid is chosen to resemble observed low-density “clumps” in nearby molecular clouds (Kirk, Johnstone & Di Francesco 2006, Bergin & Tafalla 2007) and the medium is chosen to resemble their surrounding lower-density gas.”
Dust coagulation and fragmentation in molecular clouds. I. How collisions between dust aggregates alter the dust size distribution (2009, background): “Dust is often preferred as a tracer in these types of studies because it is now well established that – except for pure hydrides – all species condense out in the form of ice man-tles at the high densities of prestellar cores (Flower et al. 2006; Bergin & Tafalla 2007; Akyilmaz et al. 2007).”