Sequential star formation in the filamentary structures of the Planck Galactic cold clump G181.84+0.31

Abstract

We present a multiwavelength study of the Planck Galactic cold clump G181.84+0.31, which is located at the northern end of the extended filamentary structure S242. We have extracted nine compact dense cores from the SCUBA-2 850-μm map, and we have identified 18 young stellar objects (YSOs; four Class I and 14 Class II) based on their Spitzer, Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) near- and mid-infrared colours. The dense cores and YSOs are mainly distributed along the filamentary structures of G181.84 and are well traced by HCO+(1-0) and N2H+(1-0) spectral-line emission. We find signatures of sequential star formation activities in G181.84: Dense cores and YSOs located in the northern and southern substructures are younger than those in the central region. We also detect global velocity gradients of about 0.8 ± 0.05 and 1.0 ± 0.05 km s-1 pc-1 along the northern and southern substructures, respectively, and local velocity gradients of 1.2 ± 0.1 km s-1 pc-1 in the central substructure. These results might be due to the fact that the global collapse of the extended filamentary structure S242 is driven by an edge effect, for which the filament edges collapse first and then further trigger star formation activities inward. We identify three substructures in G181.84 and estimate their critical masses per unit length, which are ∼101 ± 15, 56 ± 8 and 28 ± 4 M⊙ pc-1, respectively. These values are all lower than the observed values (∼200 M⊙ pc-1), suggesting that these substructures are gravitationally unstable.