An ALMA Search for Substructure and Fragmentation in Starless Cores in Orion B North

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal 2024-06, Vol.968 (1), p.10
• Main Authors: Fielder, Samuel D., Kirk, Helen, Dunham, Michael M., Offner, Stella S. R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Collapsing clouds; Cores; Dust continuum emission; External pressure; Millimeter astronomy; Molecular clouds; Protostars; Radio interferometry; Radio telescopes; Star formation; Star forming regions; Submillimeter astronomy
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad3d56

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Cycle 3 observations of 73 starless and protostellar cores in the Orion B North molecular cloud. We detect a total of 34 continuum sources at 106 GHz, and after comparisons with other data, four of these sources appear to be starless. Three of the four sources are located near groupings of protostellar sources, while one source is an isolated detection. We use synthetic observations of a simulation modeling a collapsing turbulent, magnetized core to compute the expected number of starless cores that should be detectable with our ALMA observations and find at least two (1.52) starless cores should be detectable (at 5σ), consistent with our data. We run a simple virial analysis of the cores to put the Orion B North observations into context with similar previous ALMA surveys of cores in Chamaeleon I and Ophiuchus. We conclude that the Chamaeleon I starless core population is characteristically less bounded than the other two populations, along with external pressure contributions dominating the binding energy of the cores. These differences may explain why the Chamaeleon I cores do not follow turbulent model predictions, while the Ophiuchus and Orion B North cores are consistent with the model.