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Description
Infrared-dark clouds (IRDCs) harbor the early phases of cluster and high-mass star formation and are comprised of cold (~20K), dense (n>10^4^cm^-3^) gas. The spectral energy distribution (SED) of IRDCs is dominated by the far-infrared and millimeter wavelength regime, and our initial Herschel study examined IRDCs at the peak of the SED with high angular resolution. Here we present a follow-up study using the SABOCA instrument on APEX which delivers 7.8" angular resolution at 350{mu}m, matching the resolution we achieved with Herschel/PACS, and allowing us to characterize substructure on ~0.1pc scales. Our sample of 11 nearby IRDCs are a mix of filamentary and clumpy morphologies, and the filamentary clouds show significant hierarchical structure, while the clumpy IRDCs exhibit little hierarchical structure. All IRDCs, regardless of morphology, have about 14% of their total mass in small scale core-like structures which roughly follow a trend of constant volume density over all size scales. Out of the 89 protostellar cores we identified in this sample with Herschel, we recover 40 of the brightest and re-fit their SEDs and find their properties agree fairly well with our previous estimates (<T>~19K). We detect a new population of "cold cores" which have no 70{mu}m counterpart, but are 100 and 160{mu}m-bright, with colder temperatures (<T>~16K). This latter population, along with SABOCA-only detections, are predominantly low-mass objects, but their evolutionary diagnostics are consistent with the earliest starless or prestellar phase of cores in IRDCs.
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