The Aquila prestellar core population revealed by<i>Herschel</i>

Abstract

The origin and possible universality of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a major issue in astrophysics. One of the main objectives of the <i>Herschel<i/> Gould Belt Survey is to clarify the link between the prestellar core mass function (CMF) and the IMF. We present and discuss the core mass function derived from <i>Herschel<i/> data for the large population of prestellar cores discovered with SPIRE and PACS in the Aquila rift cloud complex at <i>d<i/> ~ 260 pc. We detect a total of 541 starless cores in the entire ~11 deg<sup>2<sup/> area of the field imaged at 70–500 <i>μ<i/>m with SPIRE/PACS. Most of these cores appear to be gravitationally bound, and thus prestellar in nature. Our <i>Herschel<i/> results confirm that the shape of the prestellar CMF resembles the stellar IMF, with much higher quality statistics than earlier submillimeter continuum ground-based surveys.