Marc Pound's Research

Since 1997, I have been member of the Laboratory for Millimeter-wave Astronomy. My primary research interests are the kinematics of Galactic molecular clouds and the formation of brown dwarfs. I am also the Computing Coordinator for the CARMA project as well as a CARMA software developer.

Dynamics of Radiation Driven Molecular Clouds
With collaborators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, I am carrying out quantitative assessment of various models of formation of the Eagle Nebula pillars and structures like them. This approach combines (1) analytic theory, (2) large-scale numerical simulations, (3) scaled laboratory verification and validation experiments on high-power lasers,and (4) astronomical observations, with particular emphasis on millimeter interferometry. In the picture, Left: Contours of integrated intensity of CO(1-0) in the Eagle Nebula pillars, obtained with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association interferometer, overlayed on Hubble Space Telescope image. Right: Centroid velocity map derived from the CO(1-0) observations, showing velocity gradients along the length of Pillars I and II. [See discussion Pound (1998) ApJ, 493, L113]

Formation of Substellar Mass Objects
As a result of a mm-wavelength search for the proto-brown dwarfs in nearby molecular clouds, a 9 Jupiter mass object, Oph B-11, was identified in Ophiuchus ( Pound & Blitz 1995; Greaves, Holland and Pound 2003 ). Dr. Rahul Shetty (CfA) and I are using CARMA to map a CO outflow in this object. The figure to the left shows: 850 µm image of the ρ Oph B1 region, taken with SCUBA on the JCMT, showing proto-brown dwarf Oph B-11.