The interpretation of flows in molecular clouds

Stellar winds interacting with gas in dense molecular clouds produce flows which may be initially energy or momentum driven. A criterion for this is derived which depends sensitively on the wind velocity. Flows may change from one regime to another depending on the gas distribution about the wind source and these changes are discussed for power law density distributions. In general, the flows observed in CO associated with infrared point sources seem to be in the energy driven regime. By combining CO observations with radio continuum flux measurements, wind parameters are derived for several of these sources. There is some evidence from the derived parameters that high (L _*2×10³ L ) luminosity sources have radiatively-driven winds. Lower luminosity source winds are driven by some agency as yet unknow. We suggest that the widths of infrared lines from wind sources seriously underestimate the wind terminal velocities.