A Census of Protostellar Outflows in Nearby Molecular Clouds

Abstract

We adopt the deep learning method casi-3d (Convolutional Approach to Structure Identification-3D) to systemically identify protostellar outflows in 12CO and 13CO observations of the nearby molecular clouds, Ophiuchus, Taurus, Perseus, and Orion. The total outflow masses are 267 M Ȯ, 795 M Ȯ, 1305 M Ȯ, and 6332 M Ȯ for Ophiuchus, Taurus, Perseus, and Orion, respectively. We show the outflow mass in each cloud is linearly proportional to the total number of young stellar objects. The estimated total 3D deprojected outflow energies are 9 × 1045 erg, 6 × 1046 erg, 1.2 × 1047 erg, and 6 × 1047 erg for Ophiuchus, Taurus, Perseus, and Orion, respectively. The energy associated with outflows is sufficient to offset turbulent dissipation at the current epoch for all four clouds. All clouds also exhibit a break point in the spatial power spectrum of the outflow prediction map, which likely corresponds to the typical outflow mass and energy injection scale. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.