Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Dipen Sahu
Sheng-Yuan Liu
Tie Liu
Neal J. Evans
Naomi Hirano
Ken'ichi Tatematsu
Chin-Fei Lee
Kee-Tae Kim
Somnath Dutta
Dana Alina
Leonardo Bronfman
Maria Cunningham
David J. Eden
Guido Garay
Paul F. Goldsmith
Jinhua He
Shih-Ying Hsu
Kai-Syun Jhan
Doug Johnstone
Mika Juvela
Abstract： Prestellar cores are self-gravitating dense and cold structures within molecular clouds where future stars are born. They are expected, at the stage of transitioning to the protostellar phase, to harbor centrally concentrated dense (sub)structures that will seed the formation of a new star or the binary/multiple stellar systems. Characterizing this critical stage of evolution is key to our understanding of star formation. In this work, we report the detection of high density (sub)structures on the thousand-au scale in a sample of dense prestellar cores. Through our recent ALMA observations towards the Orion molecular cloud, we have found five extremely dense prestellar cores, which have centrally concentrated regions $\sim$ 2000 au in size, and several $10^7$ $cm^{-3}$ in average density. Masses of these centrally dense regions are in the range of 0.30 to 6.89 M$_\odot$. {\it For the first time}, our higher resolution observations (0.8$'' \sim $ 320 au) further reveal that one of the cores shows clear signatures of fragmentation; such individual substructures/fragments have sizes of 800 -1700 au, masses of 0.08 to 0.84 M$_\odot$, densities of $2 - 8\times 10^7$ $cm^{-3}$ and separations of $\sim 1200$ au. The substructures are massive enough ($\gtrsim 0.1~M_\odot$) to form young stellar objects and are likely examples of the earliest stage of stellar embryos which can lead to widely ($\sim$ 1200 au) separated multiple systems.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Qiuyi Luo
Tie Liu
Kenichi Tatematsu
ShengYuan Liu
Pak Shing Li
James di Francesco
Doug Johnstone
Paul F. Goldsmith
Somnath Dutta
Naomi Hirano
ChinFei Lee
Di Li
KeeTae Kim
Chang Won Lee
JeongEun Lee
Xunchuan Liu
Mika Juvela
Jinhua He
ShengLi Qin
HongLi Liu
Abstract： During the transition phase from a prestellar to a protostellar cloud core, one or several protostars can form within a single gas core. The detailed physical processes of this transition, however, still remain unclear. We present 1.3 mm dust continuum and molecular line observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward 43 protostellar cores in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex ($\lambda$ Orionis, Orion B, and Orion A) with an angular resolution of $\sim$ 0.35" ($\sim$ 140 au). In total, we detect 13 binary/multiple systems. We derive an overall multiplicity frequency (MF) of 28$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ and a companion star fraction (CSF) of 51$\%$ $\pm$ 6$\%$, over a separation range of 300-8900 au. The median separation of companions is about 2100 au. The occurrence of stellar multiplicity may depend on the physical characteristics of the dense cores. Notably, those containing binary/multiple systems tend to show higher gas density and Mach number than cores forming single stars. The integral-shaped filament (ISF) of Orion A giant molecular cloud (GMC), which has the highest gas density and hosts high-mass star formation in its central region (the Orion Nebula cluster), shows the highest MF and CSF among the Orion GMCs. In contrast, the $\lambda$ Orionis Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) has a lower MF and CSF than the Orion B and Orion A GMCs, indicating that feedback from HII regions may suppress the formation of multiple systems. We also find that the protostars comprising a binary/multiple system are usually at different evolutionary stages.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Che-Yu Chen
Zhi-Yun Li
Renato R. Mazzei
Jinsoo Park
Laura M. Fissel
Michael C. -Y. Chen
Richard I. Klein
Pak Shing Li
Abstract： Despite the rich observational results on interstellar magnetic fields in star-forming regions, it is still unclear how dynamically significant the magnetic fields are at varying physical scales, because direct measurement of the field strength is observationally difficult. The Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (DCF) method has been the most commonly used method to estimate the magnetic field strength from polarization data. It is based on the assumption that gas turbulent motion is the driving source of field distortion via linear Alfv\'en waves. In this work, using MHD simulations of star-forming clouds, we test the validity of the assumption underlying the DCF method by examining its accuracy in the real 3D space. Our results suggest that the DCF relation between turbulent kinetic energy and magnetic energy fluctuation should be treated as a statistical result instead of a local property. We then develop and investigate several modifications to the original DCF method using synthetic observations, and propose new recipes to improve the accuracy of DCF-derived magnetic field strength. We further note that the biggest uncertainty in the DCF analysis may come from the linewidth measurement instead of the polarization observation, especially since the line-of-sight gas velocity can be used to estimate the gas volume density, another critical parameter in the DCF method.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Astronomy >> Astrophysical processes submitted time 2023-02-19
Jian-Wen Zhou
Tie Liu
Neal J. Evans
Guido Garay
Paul F. Goldsmith
Gilberto C. Gomez
Enrique Vazquez-Semadeni
Hong-Li Liu
Amelia M. Stutz
Ke Wang
Mika Juvela
Jinhua He
Di Li
Leonardo Bronfman
Xunchuan Liu
Feng-Wei Xu
Anandmayee Tej
L. K. Dewangan
Shanghuo Li
Siju Zhang
Abstract： We investigate the presence of hub-filament systems in a large sample of 146 active proto-clusters, using H$^{13}$CO$^{+}$ J=1-0 molecular line data obtained from the ATOMS survey. We find that filaments are ubiquitous in proto-clusters, and hub-filament systems are very common from dense core scales ($\sim$0.1 pc) to clump/cloud scales ($\sim$1-10 pc). The proportion of proto-clusters containing hub-filament systems decreases with increasing dust temperature ($T_d$) and luminosity-to-mass ratios ($L/M$) of clumps, indicating that stellar feedback from H{\sc ii} regions gradually destroys the hub-filament systems as proto-clusters evolve. Clear velocity gradients are seen along the longest filaments with a mean velocity gradient of 8.71 km s$^{-1}$pc$^{-1}$ and a median velocity gradient of 5.54 km s$^{-1}$pc$^{-1}$. We find that velocity gradients are small for filament lengths larger than $\sim$1~pc, probably hinting at the existence of inertial inflows, although we cannot determine whether the latter are driven by large-scale turbulence or large-scale gravitational contraction. In contrast, velocity gradients below $\sim$1~pc dramatically increase as filament lengths decrease, indicating that the gravity of the hubs or cores starts to dominate gas infall at small scales. We suggest that self-similar hub-filament systems and filamentary accretion at all scales may play a key role in high-mass star formation.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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