CARMA Large Area Star Formation Survey: Structure and Kinematics of Dense Gas in Serpens Main

Abstract

We present observations of NL_2H^+ (J = 1 -> 0), HCO^+ (J = 1 -> 0), and HCN (J = 1 -> 0) toward the Serpens Main molecular cloud from the CARMA Large Area Star Formation Survey (CLASSy). We mapped 150 arcmin(2) of Serpens Main with an angular resolution of ~7". The gas emission is concentrated in two subclusters (the NW and SE subclusters). The SE subcluster has more prominent filamentary structures and more complicated kinematics compared to the NW subcluster. The majority of gas in the two subclusters has subsonic to sonic velocity dispersions. We applied a dendrogram technique with N_2H^+(1-0) to study the gas structures; the SE subcluster has a higher degree of hierarchy than the NW subcluster. Combining the dendrogram and line fitting analyses reveals two distinct relations: a flat relation between nonthermal velocity dispersion and size, and a positive correlation between variation in velocity centroids and size. The two relations imply a characteristic depth of 0.15 pc for the cloud. Furthermore, we have identified six filaments in the SE subcluster. These filaments have lengths of ~0.2 pc and widths of ~0.03 pc, which is smaller than a characteristic width of 0.1 pc suggested by Herschel observations. The filaments can be classified into two types based on their properties. The first type, located in the northeast of the SE subcluster, has larger velocity gradients, smaller masses, and nearly critical mass-per-unit-length ratios. The other type, located in the southwest of the SE subcluster, has the opposite properties. Several YSOs are formed along two filaments which have supercritical mass per unit length ratios, while filaments with nearly critical massper- unit-length ratios are not associated with YSOs, suggesting that stars are formed on gravitationally unstable filaments.

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