Reconstructing the Volume Density Profile of Prestellar Cores with the Anisotropic Inverse Abel Transform Method

Abstract

Abstract Most studies of the 3D density structure of prestellar cores have used isotropic evolution models, which are projected into 2D for direct comparison with observation data. In this study, we introduced the anisotropic inverse Abel transform method for reconstructing the 3D volume density profile of prestellar cores. We demonstrated that this approach could accurately preserve information about the realistic 3D structure with numerical simulation. This method has great advantages compared to the shape-assumption methods, particularly in high-density regions. We applied this method to the Herschel 2D column density maps of three prestellar cores, and the results showed good agreement with theoretical models. By changing the direction of the inversion axis of symmetry, we confirmed that the density profiles of prestellar cores exhibit nearly cylindrical symmetry.