The earliest stage of stellar-multiples? - millimeter studies on evolution of molecular cores / Dr Dipen Sahu (ASIAA)ഀ
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Dense cores (n_H2 >10^4 cm^-3 )  within molecular clouds which lead to formation of stars are called molecular cores. Depending on its evolutionary stages the cores are often classified as starless, prestellar and protostellar core. Prestellar cores are self-gravitating dense and cold structures within molecular clouds where future stars are born. They are expected, at the stage of transitioning to the protostellar phase, to harbor centrally concentrated dense (sub)structures that will seed the formation of a new star or the binary/multiple stellar systems. From our recent ALMA observations, for the first time,  we have found substructures on the thousand-astronomical-unit (au) scale in a prestellar core which likely represent the earliest stage of widely (~1000 au) separated multiple systems. The evolutionary stages of cores can be studied using dust continuum emission and most importantly the molecular line emission. In this talk, I will discuss the mm-submm observations to study the evolution of  starless cores to protostellar cores focusing on high resolution ALMA observations.