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Description
We present the catalogue of the dense cores and YSOs/protostars of the Lupus I, Lupus III, and Lupus IV molecular clouds. Sources were extracted from the far-infrared photometric maps at 70, 160, 250, 350 and 500um acquired with the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) and the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) instruments onboard the Herschel Space Observatory, within the Herschel Gould Belt Survey project. A total of 532 dense cores, out of which 103 are presumably prestellar in nature, and 38 YSOs/protostars have been detected in the three clouds. The physical properties of the objects were derived by fitting their spectral energy distributions. Almost all the prestellar cores are associated with filaments against only about one third of the unbound cores and YSOs/ protostars. Prestellar core candidates are found even in filaments that are on average thermally sub-critical and over a background column density lower than that measured in other star forming regions so far. The core mass function of the prestellar cores peaks between 0.2 and 0.3 solar masses and it is compatible with the log-normal shape found in other regions. Herschel data reveal several, previously undetected, protostars and new candidates of Class 0 and Class II with transitional disks. We estimate the evolutionary status of the YSOs/protostars using two independent indicators: the {alpha} index and the fitting of the spectral energy distribution from near- to far-infrared wavelengths. For 70% of the objects, the evolutionary stages derived with the two methods are in agreement.
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