Cosmic-ray heating of molecular cloud cores

Abstract

Cosmic rays are an important source of heating in the interstellar medium, in particular in dense molecular cloud cores shielded from the external ultraviolet radiation field. The limits placed on the cosmic-ray ionization rate from measurements of the gas temperature in dense clouds are unaffected by the uncertainties associated to the traditional methods based on the analysis of molecular abundances. However, high-resolution data are required to determine with sufficient accuracy the spatial temperature distribution within prestellar cores. In this contribution we illustrate in detail the case of the well-studied prestellar core L1544, showing that both its thermal structure and chemical composition are consistent with a cosmic ray ionization rate of ∼ 10−17 s−1, significantly smaller than the value measured in the diffuse interstellar medium. We also briefly discuss possible applications of this method to the molecular clouds of other galaxies.