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Observations of prestellar cores: Probing the initial conditions for the IMF

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2006

Philippe André*
Affiliation:
CEA Saclay, DSM/DAPNIA, Service d'Astrophysique, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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Several (sub)millimeter-wave studies of nearby star-forming regions have revealed self-gravitating prestellar condensations that seem to be the direct progenitors of individual stars and whose mass distribution resembles the IMF. In a number of cases, small internal and relative motions have been measured for these condensations, indicating they are much less turbulent than their parent cloud and do not have time to interact before evolving into protostars and pre-main sequence stars. These findings suggest that the IMF is at least partly determined by pre-collapse cloud fragmentation and that one of the keys to understanding the origin of stellar masses lies in the physical mechanisms responsible for the formation and decoupling of prestellar cores within molecular clouds.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

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