Surveying the Prebiotic Chemistry in Starless and Prestellar Cores in the Perseus Molecular Cloud

Within molecular clouds, cold (10 K) and dense (10⁵cm^-3) starless and dynamically evolved prestellar cores set the initial conditions of low-mass (M ≤ a few solar masses) star formation. Despite being in a relatively quiescent stage, starless and prestellar cores are known to contain interstellar complex organic molecules, or COMs, which are defined as carbon-bearing molecules with at least six or more atoms and are believed to be important precursors to more biologically relevant species such as amino acids, DNA and RNA. As detections of COMs in this early core stage has increased, abundance comparisons suggest that some COMs are likely seeded early on in the star formation process and inherited to the later stages (e.g., protostars and comets). Observations are still limited, however, with most of the detections of COMs in starless and prestellar cores from surveys done toward the nearby (135 pc) Taurus Molecular Cloud. It is therefore still unanswered whether or not different environments show variation in COM abundances. From our survey of 35 starless and prestellar cores in the Perseus Molecular Cloud (300 pc) with the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) 12m telescope and Yebes 40m telescope we report new detections of ketene, H₂CCO, methanol, CH₃OH, methyl cyanide, CH₃CN, acetaldehyde, CH₃CHO, methyl formate, HCOOCH₃ and dimethyl ether, CH₃OCH₃. Here we present detection statistics and compare abundances across the various stages of the low-mass star formation process. These findings show that COMs are prevalent in the cold gas before star and planet formation in the Perseus Molecular Cloud.