2010ApJ...714..680M

Using the archive data of the H¹³CO⁺ (J = 1-0) line emission taken with the Nobeyama 45 m radio telescope with a spatial resolution of ∼ 0.01 pc, we have identified 68 dense cores in the central dense region of the ρ Ophiuchi main cloud. The H¹³CO⁺ data also indicate that the fractional abundance of H¹³CO⁺ relative to H₂ is roughly inversely proportional to the square root of the H₂ column density with a mean of 1.72x10^–11. The mean radius, FWHM line width, and LTE mass of the identified cores are estimated to be 0.045±0.011 pc, 0.49±0.14 km/s, and 3.4±3.6 M_☉, respectively. The majority of the identified cores have subsonic internal motions. The virial ratio, the ratio of the virial mass to the LTE mass, tends to decrease with increasing LTE mass and about 60% of the cores have virial ratios smaller than 2, indicating that these cores are not transient structures but self-gravitating. The detailed virial analysis suggests that the surface pressure often dominates over the self-gravity and thus plays a crucial role in regulating core formation and evolution. By comparing the ρ Oph cores with those in the Orion A molecular cloud observed with the same telescope, we found that the statistical properties of the core physical quantities are similar between the two clouds if the effect of the different spatial resolutions is corrected. The line widths of the ρ Oph cores appear to be nearly independent of the core radii over the range of 0.01-0.1 pc and deviate upward from the Heyer & Brunt relation. This may be evidence that turbulent motions are driven by protostellar outflows in the cluster environment.