A Census of Diverse Environments in Infrared Dark Clouds: Where Do Massive Stars Form?

Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) harbor the earliest phases of massive star formation and complex astrochemistry. IRDCs are extraordinarily dense and cold objects of dust and molecular gas arranged in filamentary or globule structures with compact cores. Many of the compact molecular and millimeter cores are known to host massive protostars from a variety of star formation indicators. We have used the GBT and the VLA to map ammonia and CCS in nine IRDCs to reveal the temperature, density, and velocity structures and explore chemical evolution in the dense cores. Ammonia is an ideal molecular tracer for these environments as its critical density is appropriate for IRDCs, and nitrogen-bearing species are not prone to dust-grain freeze-out even in these cold regions. The hyperfine structure allows unambiguous determination of the optical depth and thus the column density, and using two rotational transitions allows determination of the temperature. By imaging ammonia and CCS in these regions, we can use their abundance ratios as “chemical clocks” to determine whether the starless cores are indeed less evolved. With this data we will begin to address the questions of how these two classes of cores are alike and different and whether the quiescent cores are likely to eventually form stars or not. We further investigate the structure and kinematics of the IRDCs, revealing gradients and colliding sub-clouds that elucidate the formation process of these structures and their protostars. A comprehensive study of IRDCs in molecular gas tracers with both total power and high resolution is necessary to truly understand the relationship between IRDCs and massive star formation.