Submillimetre Studies of Prestellar and Starless Cores in the Ophiuchus, Taurus and Cepheus Molecular Clouds

This thesis presents studies of the starless core populations of three nearby molecular clouds made as part of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Gould Belt Survey. These studies combine observations made using the SCUBA-2 submillimetre camera with data from several other instruments, including the Herschel Space Observatory, to identify and characterise starless cores in the Ophiuchus, Taurus and ...