Formaldehyde emission from low mass protostars

Abstract

We present a survey of the formaldehyde emission in nine class 0 protostars obtained with the IRAM 30m and the JCMT millimeter telescopes. Using a detailed radiative transfer code of the envelopes surrounding the protostars, we show that all but one of the observed objects show an inner warm evaporation region where the formaldehyde is much more abundant (up to three orders of magnitude) than in the outer cold part. The largest inner formaldehyde abundances are associated with the sources having the lowest submillimetric to bolometric luminosity ratio, i.e. with sources closer to the class I border. These abundances are compared with predictions from recent models of hot core chemistry.