Three‐dimensional Non‐LTE Radiative Transfer of CS in Clumpy Dense Cores

Abstract

With a Monte Carlo radiative transfer code we have investigated excitation conditions of the CS molecule in dense cores and synthesized line profiles for several transitions of both CS and C34S. We took two kinds of models of the dense core: a clumpy and a smooth model. In the clumpy model, the core is composed of many small clumps, whose volume filling factor f is unity in the central region of r ≤ 0.2R and then declines as f r-1.5. However, H2 number density in the clump is kept constant and also independent of the clump position. The mean number density, nH2(r), is thus constant in the central part and then decreases as the same power law. In the smooth model, the gas fills the core completely, and its local density exactly follows the mean density of the clumpy model. For both models, each clump has thermal as well as bulk motions, velocity dispersion of the latter being proportional to r0.5. In the clumpy structured core, the excitation temperature of the CS transitions is found to be generally constant over an entire region. As a consequence, the synthesized profile is of a Gaussian shape superposed with some wiggles, which reflects the existence of clumps under the bulk motion. The trend of flat distribution of excitation temperature becomes more prominent for optically thin transitions of the rarer species C34S. The profiles develop flat-top features with minor wiggles only when the core becomes extremely thick in the optical sense. On the other hand, wider profiles that have self-absorption are synthesized in the smooth core. The self-absorption is formed by a steep gradient in the radial distribution of the excitation temperature. For optically thin C34S transitions, both the clumpy and the smooth cores exhibit profiles close to a Gaussian shape. Comparing line parameters derived in the Monte Carlo code and those by the large-scale velocity gradient calculations, we found that only the clumpy models can give correct estimations of the density and abundance of the cores. Moreover, we have shown that clump parameters, such as clump size and number of clumps in a beam, are reasonably estimated by Tauber's simple method. Since the opaque line reflects properties of a region of τ ~ 1, local unbalance of bulk velocity distribution in the core, for instance, often results in a blue peak stronger than the red peak in the CS line profiles. Thus it should be noted that a combination of this feature of the optically thick line and the single peak of the thin one may not necessarily imply a signature of infall.