3,357 research outputs found
Explosive Disintegration of a Massive Young Stellar System in Orion
Young massive stars in the center of crowded star clusters are expected to
undergo close dynamical encounters that could lead to energetic, explosive
events. However, there has so far never been clear observational evidence of
such a remarkable phenomenon. We here report new interferometric observations
made with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) that indicate the well known enigmatic
wide-angle outflow located in the Orion BN/KL star-forming region to have been
produced by such a violent explosion during the disruption of a massive young
stellar system, and that this was caused by a close dynamical interaction about
500 years ago. This outflow thus belongs to a totally different family of
molecular flows which is not related to the classical bipolar flows that are
generated by stars during their formation process. Our molecular data allow us
to create a 3D view of the debris flow and to link this directly to the well
known Orion H "fingers" farther outComment: Accepted by ApJ Letters The 3D movie can be found in:
ftp://ftp.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/outgoing/lzapata/movie.gi
The APEX-CHAMP+ view of the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 core - Constraining the excitation with submillimeter CO multi-line observations
A high density portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 (OMC-1) contains the
prominent, warm Kleinmann-Low (KL) nebula that is internally powered by an
energetic event plus a farther region in which intermediate to high mass stars
are forming. Its outside is affected by ultraviolet radiation from the
neighboring Orion Nebula Cluster and forms the archetypical photon-dominated
region (PDR) with the prominent bar feature. Its nearness makes the OMC-1 core
region a touchstone for research on the dense molecular interstellar medium and
PDRs. Using the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX), we have imaged
the line emission from the multiple transitions of several carbon monoxide (CO)
isotopologues over the OMC-1 core region. Our observations employed the 2x7
pixel submillimeter CHAMP+ array to produce maps (~ 300 arcsec x 350 arcsec) of
12CO, 13CO, and C18O from mid-J transitions (J=6-5 to 8-7). We also obtained
the 13CO and C18O J=3-2 images toward this region. The 12CO line emission shows
a well-defined structure which is shaped and excited by a variety of phenomena,
including the energetic photons from hot, massive stars in the nearby Orion
Nebula's central Trapezium cluster, active high- and intermediate-mass star
formation, and a past energetic event that excites the KL nebula. Radiative
transfer modeling of the various isotopologic CO lines implies typical H2
densities in the OMC-1 core region of ~10^4-10^6 cm^-3 and generally elevated
temperatures (~ 50-250 K). We estimate a warm gas mass in the OMC-1 core region
of 86-285 solar masses.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted by A&
Lepton masses and mixing without Yukawa hierarchies
We investigate the neutrino masses and mixing patten in a version of the
model with one extra exotic charged
lepton per family as introduced by Ozer. It is shown that an extended scalar
sector, together with a discrete symmetry, is able to reproduce a
consistent lepton mass spectrum without a hierarchy in the Yukawa coupling
constants, the former as a carefull balance between one universal see-saw and
two radiative mechanisms.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D
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