C18O cores in Orion A

We compute the core masses by decomposing the Herschel-Planck dust column density using the relative proportions of the C^18^O integrated intensities of line-of-sight components. Applying this procedure, we attempt to remove the contribution of the background emission, i.e., the ambient gas outside the cores. Then, we derived mass function for starless cores and found that it resembles the stellar initial mass function (IMF).

The CMF for starless cores, dN/dM, is fitted with a power-law relation of M^{alpha}^ with a power index of {alpha}=-2.25+/-0.16 at the high-mass slope (>~0.44M_{sun}_). We also found that the ratio of each core mass to the total mass integrated along the line of sight is significantly large. Therefore, in the previous studies, the core masses derived from the dust image are likely to be overestimated by at least a factor of a few.

Accordingly, such previous studies may underestimate the star formation efficiency of individual cores.