Stellar population in {rho} Oph cloud core

A large fraction 11/14) of the radio sources associated with the cores appear to have infrared excesses diagnostic of circumstellar accretion disks and/or infalling circumstellar envelopes. In these cases, the centimeter continuum radiation most likely diagnoses the ionized component of energetic winds or jets which characterize YSOs during the disk accretion phase. By contrast, of the eight radio sources located outside dense cores, only two show infrared excesses.

For the sources which lack infrared excesses, the centimeter continuum emission is probably produced by gyrosynchrotron radiation arising in the stellar magnetospheres of weak emission T Tauri stars. There is some evidence that the frequency of binary companions among the sample of centimeter continuum sources in the molecular cores may be higher (by as much as a factor of 3-4) than that among the older, distributed population of young stars in the larger Ophiuchus cloud complex.