Presentation #402.05 in the session Molecular Clouds, HII Regions, Interstellar Medium II.
We present a new single-zone, non-LTE radiative transfer code, Jadex, for estimating the gas kinetic temperatures and volume densities of molecular clouds. The software is numerically optimized for the repeated likelihood evaluations needed for parameter estimation using Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods. As a demonstration we estimate gas kinetic temperatures of dense cores detected in the SMA “CMZoom” survey of the Milky Way’s Central Molecular Zone using the three K-doublet transitions of formaldehyde near 218 GHz. Finally, we report initial results from a comparison of the measured temperatures to core evolutionary states and tracers of star formation activity.