학술논문
The ALMA-QUARKS survey: Detection of two extremely dense substructures in a massive prestellar core
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Mai, Xiaofeng; Liu, Tie; Liu, Xunchuan; Zhu, Lei; Garay, Guido; Goldsmith, Paul F.; Juvela, Mika; Liu, Hongli; Mannfors, Emma; Tej, Anandmayee; Sanhueza, Patricio; Li, Shanghuo; Xu, Fengwei; Semadeni, Enrique Vazquez; Jiao, Wenyu; Peng, Yaping; Baug, T.; Yang, Aiyuan; Dewangan, Lokesh; Bronfman, Leonardo; Gómez, Gilberto C.; Palau, Aina; Lee, Chang Won; Qin, Sheng-Li; Tatematsu, Ken'ichi; Chibueze, James O.; Yang, Dongting; Lu, Xing; Luo, Qiuyi; Gu, Qilao; Issac, Namitha; Zhang, Suinan; Li, Pak-Shing; Zhang, Bo; Tóth, L. Viktor
Source
Subject
Language
Abstract
Only a handful of massive starless core candidates have been discovered so far, but none of them have been fully confirmed. Within the MM1 clump in the filamentary infrared dark cloud G34.43+0.24 that was covered by the ALMA-ATOMS survey at Band 3 ($\sim2\arcsec$, 6000\,au) and the ALMA-QUARKS survey at Band 6 ($\sim 0.3\arcsec$, 900\,au), two prestellar core candidates MM1-C and E1 with masses of 71 and 20 \solarmass~and radii of 2100--4400\,au were discovered. The two cores show no obvious sign of star-formation activities. In particular, MM1-C is a very promising massive prestellar core candidate with a total gas mass of 71\,\solarmass. Within MM1-C, we detected two extremely dense substructures, C1 and C2, as characterized by their high densities of $\rm n_{H_2}\sim 10^{8-9} cm^{-3}$. Moreover, evidence of further fragmentation in C2 was also revealed. We have detected the primordial fragmentation in the earliest stage of massive star formation, and we speculate that MM1-C would be the birthplace of a massive multiple system. However, we cannot fully rule out the possibility that the massive prestellar core MM1-C will just form a cluster of low-mass stars if it undergoes further fragmentation.
Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures
Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures