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Molecular complexity in low-metallicity astrophyical environments

Subject Area Astrophysics and Astronomy
Term from 2019 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426501126
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

The Magellanic Clouds represent, with their low metallicity and high UV field, the closest local analogy to conditions in the early universe. Understanding star formation at this epoch is important, since most of the stars existing in the Universe today formed under such conditions. Another relevant aspect is that we need to understand the formation of high-mass stars in this kind of environment. Those stars, which have a short lifetime, but dominate the energy input into their surroundings, shape not only their local neighborhood, but can, through concerted supernova explosions in high-mass clusters, shape and disrupt structures on the galactic scale. It is thus relevant to know if they were under- (bottom-heavy IMF) or over- (top-heavy IMF) abundant relative to star formation today. The Magellanic Clouds are close enough that detailed processes of high mass star formation can be observed at high spatial resolution and sensitivity with powerful telescopes such as ALMA. We had obtained such data, allowing to make an inventory of the molecular and protostellar content of 20 regions throughout the Large Magellanic Cloud. The specific aim was to determine the content of complex organic molecules (COMs) in hot cores in the LMC, and to compare it with the star formation properties of the regions. The COM content traces the dust temperature in the early phases of star formation, which impacts the Jeans mass and thereby the fragmentation properties, and the clump mass function of the cores. Additionally, we could investigate the core mass function, clustering properties and the core formation efficiency.

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