Gas and Dust Temperature in Prestellar Cores Revisited: New Limits on Cosmic-Ray Ionization Rate

Abstract

We develop a self-consistent model for the equilibrium gas temperature and size-dependent dust temperature in cold, dense, prestellar cores, assuming an arbitrary power-law size distribution of dust grains. Compact analytical expressions applicable to a broad range of physical parameters are derived and compared with predictions of the commonly used standard model. It is suggested that combining the theoretical results with observations should allow us to constrain the degree of dust evolution and the cosmic-ray ionization rate in dense cores, and to help with discriminating between different regimes of cosmic-ray transport in molecular clouds. In particular, assuming a canonical MRN distribution of grain sizes, our theory demonstrates that the gas-temperature measurements in the prestellar core L1544 are consistent with an ionization rate as high as ∼10 −16 s −1 , an order of magnitude higher than previously thought.