First Detection of A Linear Structure in the Midplane of the Young HH 211 Protostellar Disk: A Spiral Arm?

Spiral structures have been detected in evolved protostellar disks, driving the disk accretion towards the central protostars to facilitate star formation. However, it is still unclear if these structures can form earlier in young protostellar disks. With the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), we have detected and spatially resolved a very young and nearly edge-on dusty disk with a radius of only ~ 20 au in the HH 211 protostellar system at submillimeter wavelength. It is geometrically thick, indicating that the submillimeter light-emitting dust grains have yet to settle to the midplane for planet formation. Intriguingly, it shows 3 bright linear structures parallel to the equatorial plane, resembling a 3-layer pancake that has not been seen before. The top and bottom ones arise from the warm disk surfaces, unveiling the flared structure of the disk. More importantly, the middle one is in the dense midplane of the disk and can be modeled as a trailing spiral arm excited by disk gravity, as seen in evolved protostellar disks, supporting the presence of spiral structures in the very early phase for disk accretion.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP) : A Hot Corino Survey toward Protostellar Cores in the Orion Cloud

The presence of complex organic molecules (COMs) in the interstellar medium is of great interest since it may link to the origin and prevalence of life in the universe. Aiming to investigate the occurrence of COMs and their possible origins, we conducted a chemical census toward a sample of protostellar cores as part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps project. We report the detection of 11 hot corino sources, which exhibit compact emissions from warm and abundant COMs, among 56 Class 0/I protostellar cores. All of the hot corino sources discovered are likely Class 0, and their sizes of the warm region (>100 K) are comparable to 100 au. The luminosity of the hot corino sources exhibits positive correlations with the total number of methanol and the extent of its emissions. Such correlations are consistent with the thermal desorption picture for the presence of hot corinos and suggest that the lower-luminosity (Class 0) sources likely have a smaller region with COM emissions. With the same sample selection method and detection criteria being applied, the detection rates of the warm methanol in the Orion cloud (15/37) and the Perseus cloud (28/50) are statistically similar when the cloud distances and the limited sample size are considered. Observing the same set of COM transitions will bring a more informative comparison between the cloud properties.Peer reviewe

ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP). I. Detection of New Hot Corinos with the ACA

We report the detection of four new hot corino sources, G211.47-19.27S, G208.68-19.20N1, G210.49-19.79W, and G192.12-11.10, from a survey study of Planck Galactic Cold Clumps in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex with the Atacama Compact Array. Three sources had been identified as low-mass Class 0 protostars in the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey. One source in the lambda Orionis region is first reported as a protostellar core. We have observed abundant complex organic molecules (COMs), primarily methanol but also other oxygen-bearing COMs (in G211.47-19.27S and G208.68-19.20N1) and the molecule of prebiotic interest NH2CHO (in G211.47-19.27S), signifying the presence of hot corinos. While our spatial resolution is not sufficient to resolve most of the molecular emission structure, the large line width and high rotational temperature of COMs suggest that they likely reside in the hotter and innermost region immediately surrounding the protostar. In G211.47-19.27S, the D/H ratio of methanol ([CH2DOH]/[CH3OH]) and the(12)C/C-13 ratio of methanol ([CH3OH]/[(CH3OH)-C-13]) are comparable to those of other hot corinos. Hydrocarbons and long-carbon-chain molecules such as c-C(3)H(2)and HCCCN are also detected in the four sources, likely tracing the outer and cooler molecular envelopes.Peer reviewe

ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP). II. Survey Overview : A First Look at 1.3 mm Continuum Maps and Molecular Outflows

Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (PGCCs) are considered to be the ideal targets to probe the early phases of star formation. We have conducted a survey of 72 young dense cores inside PGCCs in the Orion complex with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at 1.3 mm (band 6) using three different configurations (resolutions similar to 035, 10, and 70) to statistically investigate their evolutionary stages and substructures. We have obtained images of the 1.3 mm continuum and molecular line emission ((CO)-C-12, and SiO) at an angular resolution of similar to 035 (similar to 140 au) with the combined arrays. We find 70 substructures within 48 detected dense cores with median dust mass similar to 0.093 M and deconvolved size similar to 027. Dense substructures are clearly detected within the central 1000 au of four candidate prestellar cores. The sizes and masses of the substructures in continuum emission are found to be significantly reduced with protostellar evolution from Class 0 to Class I. We also study the evolutionary change in the outflow characteristics through the course of protostellar mass accretion. A total of 37 sources exhibit CO outflows, and 20 (>50%) show high-velocity jets in SiO. The CO velocity extents (Delta Vs) span from 4 to 110 km s(-1) with outflow cavity opening angle width at 400 au ranging from [Theta(obs)](400) similar to 06-39, which corresponds to 334-1257. For the majority of the outflow sources, the Delta Vs show a positive correlation with [Theta(obs)](400), suggesting that as protostars undergo gravitational collapse, the cavity opening of a protostellar outflow widens and the protostars possibly generate more energetic outflows.Peer reviewe

ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP) : Evidence for a Molecular Jet Launched at an Unprecedented Early Phase of Protostellar Evolution

Protostellar outflows and jets play a vital role in star formation as they carry away excess angular momentum from the inner disk surface, allowing the material to be transferred toward the central protostar. Theoretically, low-velocity and poorly collimated outflows appear from the beginning of the collapse at the first hydrostatic core (FHSC) stage. With growing protostellar core mass, high-density jets are launched, entraininf an outflow from the infalling envelope. Until now, molecular jets have been observed at high velocity (greater than or similar to 100 km s(-1)) in early Class 0 protostars. We, for the first time, detect a dense molecular jet in SiO emission with low velocity (similar to 4.2 km s(-1), deprojected similar to 24 km s(-1)) from source G208.89-20.04Walma (hereafter G208Walma) using ALMA Band 6 observations. This object has some characteristics of FHSCs, such as a small outflow/jet velocity, extended 1.3 mm continuum emission, and N2D+ line emission. Additional characteristics, however, are typical of early protostars: collimated outflow and SiO jet. The full extent of the outflow corresponds to a dynamical timescale of similar to 930(-100)(+200) yr. The spectral energy distribution also suggests a very young source having an upper limit of T-bol similar to 31 K and L-bol similar to 0.8 L-circle dot. We conclude that G208Walma is likely in the transition phase from FHSC to protostar, and the molecular jet has been launched within a few hundred years of initial collapse. Therefore, G208Walma may be the earliest object discovered in the protostellar phase with a molecular jet.Peer reviewe

ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP): How Do Dense Core Properties Affect the Multiplicity of Protostars?

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, remain unclear. We present 1.3 mm dust continuum and molecular line observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array toward 43 protostellar cores in the Orion molecular cloud complex (λ Orionis, Orion B, and Orion A) with an angular resolution of ∼0.″35 (∼140 au). In total, we detect 13 binary/multiple systems. We derive an overall multiplicity frequency (MF) of 28% ± 4% and a companion star fraction (CSF) of 51% ± 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 a higher gas density and Mach number than cores forming single stars. The integral-shaped filament of the 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 λ Orionis GMC has a lower MF and CSF than the Orion B and Orion A GMCs, indicating that feedback from H ii 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.T.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) through grants No. 12073061 and No. 12122307, the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) through grant No. 114231KYSB20200009, the Shanghai Pujiang Program (20PJ1415500), and science research grants from the China Manned Space Project with no. CMS-CSST-2021-B06. K.T. was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI (grant No. 20H05645). D.J. and J.d.F. are supported by NRC Canada and by NSERC Discovery Grants. C.-F.L. acknowledge grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MoST 107-2119-M-001-040-MY3 and 110-2112-M-001-021-MY3) and Academia Sinica (Investigator Award AS-IA-108-M01). This research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). J.-E.L. was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (grant No. 2021R1A2C1011718). J.H. acknowledges the support of NSFC projects 11873086 and U1631237. This work is sponsored (in part) by the CAS, through a grant to the CAS South America Center for Astronomy in Santiago, Chile. S.-L.Q. is supported by the NSFC with grant No. 12033005. S.Z. acknowledges the support of the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation through grant No. 2021M700248. L.B. gratefully acknowledges support by the ANID BASAL projects ACE210002 and FB210003. P.S. was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI No. 18H01259) of JSPS. V.-M.P. acknowledges support by the grant PID2020-115892GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP) : Detection of Extremely High-density Compact Structure of Prestellar Cores and Multiple Substructures Within

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-astronomical-unit (au) scale in a sample of dense prestellar cores. Through our recent ALMA observations toward the Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps, we have found five extremely dense prestellar cores, which have centrally concentrated regions of similar to 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. For the first time, our higher resolution observations (0.8 '' similar to 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, densities of 2 - 8 x 10(7) cm(-3), and separations of similar to 1200 au. The substructures are massive enough (greater than or similar to 0.1 M) to form young stellar objects and are likely examples of the earliest stage of stellar embryos that can lead to widely (similar to 1200 au) separated multiple systems.Peer reviewe