Fragmentation and kinematics in high-mass star formation: CORE-extension targeting two very young high-mass star-forming regions
H. Beuther, C. Gieser, S. Suri, H. Linz, P. Klaassen, D. Semenov, J. M. Winters, Th. Henning, J. D. Soler, J. S. Urquhart, J. Syed, S . Feng, T. Moeller, M. T. … 展开作者
H. Beuther, C. Gieser, S. Suri, H. Linz, P. Klaassen, D. Semenov, J. M. Winters, Th. Henning, J. D. Soler, J. S. Urquhart, J. Syed, S . Feng, T. Moeller, M. T. Beltran, A. Sanchez-Monge, S. N. Longmore, T. Peters, J. Ballesteros-Paredes, P. Schilke, L. Moscadelli, A. Palau, R. Cesaroni, S. Lumsden, R. Pudritz, F. Wyrowski, R. Kuiper, A. Ahmadi
Context: The formation of high-mass star-forming regions from their parental gas cloud and the subsequent fragmentation processes lie at the heart of star formation research. Aims: We aim to study the dynamical and fragmentation properties at very early evolutionary stages of high-mass star formation. Methods: Employing the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) and the IRAM 30m telescope, we observed two young high-mass star-forming regions, ISOSS22478 and ISOSS23053, in the 1.3mm continuum and spectral line emission at a high angular resolution (~0.8''). Results: We resolved 29 cores that are mostly located along filament-like structures. Depending on the temperature assumption, these cores follow a mass-size relation of approximately M~r^2.0, corresponding to constant mean column densities. However, with different temperature assumptions, a steeper mass-size relation up to M~r^3.0, which would be more likely to correspond to constant mean volume densities, cannot be ruled out. The correlation of the core masses with their nearest neighbor separations is consistent with thermal Jeans fragmentation. We found hardly any core separations at the spatial resolution limit, indicating that the data resolve the large-scale fragmentation well. Although the kinematics of the two regions appear very different at first sight - multiple velocity components along filaments in ISOSS22478 versus a steep velocity gradient of more than 50km/s/pc in ISOSS23053 - the findings can be explained within the framework of a dynamical cloud collapse scenario. Conclusions: While our data are consistent with a dynamical cloud collapse scenario and subsequent thermal Jeans fragmentation, the importance of additional environmental properties, such as the magnetization of the gas or external shocks triggering converging gas flows, is nonetheless not as well constrained and would require future investigation.
A stochastic and analytical model of hierarchical fragmentation: The fragmentation of gas structures into young stellar objects in the interstellar medium
本文提出引力—湍流框架下的随机解析层级碎裂模型，用 EOS 追踪多尺度气体碎裂，解释恒星多重性、特征尺度及前恒星天体吸积演化。
We report the detection of a new Galactic bubble at the interface between the halo and the Galactic disc. We suggest that the nearby Lupus complex and parts of the Ophiuchus complex constitute the denser parts of the structure. This young bubble, < 3 Myr old, could be the remnant of a supernova and expands inside a larger HI loop that has been created by the outflows of the Upper Scorpius OB association. An HI cavity filled with hot X-ray gas is associated with the structure, which is consistent with the Galactic chimney scenario. The X-ray emission extends beyond the west and north-west edges…
The surroundings of massive protostars constitute an accretion disc which has numerically been shown to be subject to fragmentation and responsible for luminous accretion-driven outbursts. Moreover, it is suspected to produce close binary companions which will later strongly influence the star's future evolution in the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram. We present three-dimensional gravitation-radiation-hydrodynamic numerical simulations of 100 Mo pre-stellar cores. We find that accretion discs of young massive stars violently fragment without preventing the (highly variable) accretion of gaseous clu…
Direct imaging searches have revealed many very low-mass objects, including a small number of planetary mass objects, as wide-orbit companions to young stars. The formation mechanism of these objects remains uncertain. In this paper we present the predictions of the disc fragmentation model regarding the properties of the discs around such low-mass objects. We find that the discs around objects that have formed by fragmentation in discs hosted by Sun-like stars (referred to as 'parent' discs and 'parent' stars) are more massive than expected from the ${M}_{\rm disc}-M_*$ relation (which is der…
Intermediate mass protostars, the bridge between the very common solar-like protostars and the more massive, but rarer, O and B stars, can only be studied at high physical spatial resolutions in a handful of clouds. In this paper we present and analyze the continuum results from an observing campaign at the Submillimeter Array targeting two well-studied intermediate mass protostars in Orion, NGC 2071 and L1641 S3 MMS 1. The extended SMA (eSMA) probes structure at angular resolutions up to 0.2", revealing protostellar disks on scales of 200 AU. Continuum flux measurements on these scales indica…
We report new, $\sim$1000 AU spatial resolution observations of 225 GHz dust continuum emission towards the OB cluster-forming molecular clump G33.92+0.11. On parsec scales, this molecular clump presents a morphology with several arm-like dense gas structures surrounding the two central massive ($\gtrsim$100 $M_{\odot}$) cores. From the new, higher resolution observations, we identified 28 localized, spatially compact dust continuum emission sources, which may be candidates of young stellar objects. Only one of them is not embedded within known arm-like (or elongated) dense gas structures. The…
Little is known about how high-mass stars form. Around 30\% of the young high-mass stars in the Galaxy are observed at the edges of ionized (HII) regions. Therefore these are places of choice to study the earliest stages of high-mass star formation, especially towards the most massive condensations. High-spatial resolution observations in the millimeter range might reveal how these stars form and how they assemble their mass. We want to study the fragmentation process down to the 0.01~pc scale in the most massive condensation observed at the south-western edge of the HII region RCW~120 where t…
Understanding the formation of wide binary systems of very low mass stars (M $\le$ 0.1 Msun) is challenging. The most obvious route is via widely separated low-mass collapsing fragments produced through turbulent fragmentation of a molecular core. However, close binaries/multiples from disk fragmentation can also evolve to wide binaries over a few initial crossing times of the stellar cluster through tidal evolution. Finding an isolated low mass wide binary system in the earliest stage of formation, before tidal evolution could occur, would prove that turbulent fragmentation is a viable mechan…
The fragmentation of a molecular cloud that leads to the formation of high-mass stars occurs on a hierarchy of different spatial scales. The large molecular clouds harbour massive molecular clumps with massive cores embedded in them. The fragmentation of these cores may determine the initial mass function and the masses of the final stars. Therefore, studying the fragmentation processes in the cores is crucial to understand how massive stars form. The hot molecular core G34-MM1, embedded in IRDC G34.34+00.24 located at a distance of 3.6 kpc, is a promising object to study both the fragmentatio…
Protostars grow in mass by accreting material through their discs, and this accretion is initially their main source of luminosity. The resulting radiative feedback heats the environments of young protostars, and may thereby suppress further fragmentation and star formation. There is growing evidence that the accretion of material onto protostars is episodic rather than continuous; most of it happens in short bursts that last up to a few hundred years, whereas the intervals between these outbursts of accretion could be thousands of years. We have developed a model to include the effects of epi…
The formation of the massive young stars surrounding SgrA* is still an open question. In this paper, we simulate the infall of a turbulent molecular cloud towards the Galactic Center (GC). We adopt two different cloud masses (4.3x10^4 and 1.3x10^5 solar masses). We run five simulations: the gas is assumed to be isothermal in four runs, whereas radiative cooling is included in the fifth run. In all the simulations, the molecular cloud is tidally disrupted, spirals towards the GC, and forms a small, dense and eccentric disk around SgrA*. With high resolution simulations, we follow the fragmentat…
Ejecta knot flickering, ablation tails, and fragmentation are expected signatures associated with the gradual dissolution of high-velocity supernova (SN) ejecta caused by their passage through an inhomogeneous circumstellar or interstellar medium. Such phenomena mark the initial stages of the gradual merger of SN ejecta with and the enrichment of the surrounding interstellar medium. Here we report on an investigation of this process through changes in the optical flux and morphology of several high-velocity ejecta knots located in the outskirts of the young core-collapse SN remnant Cassiopeia …
Recent observations of young stellar systems with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) are helping to cement the idea that close companion stars form via fragmentation of a gravitationally unstable disk around a protostar early in the star formation process. As the disk grows in mass, it eventually becomes gravitationally unstable and fragments, forming one or more new protostars in orbit with the first at mean separations of 100 astronomical units (AU) or even less. Here we report direct numerical calculations down to scales as …
A nine-member protostellar system forming via filament fragmentation in the high mass protocluster NGC 6334-43
Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews（圣安德鲁斯大学物理与天文学学院）；National Radio Astronomy Observatory（国家射电天文台）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Aberystwyth University（阿伯里斯特威斯大学）
Most molecular clouds are filamentary or elongated. Among those forming low-mass stars, their long axes tend to be either parallel or perpendicular to the large-scale (10-100 pc) magnetic field (B-field) in the surrounding inter cloud medium. This arises because, along the dynamically dominant B-fields, the competition between self-gravity and turbulent pressure will shape the cloud to be elongated either perpendicular or parallel to the fields. Recent study also suggested that, on the scales of 0.1-0.01 pc, fields are dynamically important within cloud cores forming massive stars. But whether…
Simulations of massive star formation predict the formation of discs with significant substructure, such as spiral arms and clumps due to fragmentation. Here we present a semi-analytic framework for producing synthetic observations of discs with substructure, in order to determine their observability in interferometric observations. Unlike post-processing of hydrodynamical models, the speed inherent to our approach permits us to explore a large parameter space of star and disc parameters, and thus constrain properties for real observations. We compute synthetic dust continuum and molecular lin…
Molecular cloud complexes exhibit both (i) an unfettered Larson-type spectrum over much of their dynamic range, whilst (ii) still producing a much lower star-formation rate than were this cascade to remain unfettered all the way down to star-forming scales. Here we explain the compatibility of these attributes with minimalist considerations of a mass-conserving fragmentation cascade, combined with estimates of stellar feedback. Of importance is that the amount of feedback needed to abate fragmentation and truncate the complex decreases with decreasing scale. The scale at which the feedback mom…
This paper discusses a new method to generate self-coherent initial conditions for young substructured stellar cluster. The expansion of a uniform system allows stellar sub-structures (clumps) to grow from fragmentation modes by adiabatic cooling. We treat the system mass elements as stars, chosen according to a Salpeter mass function, and the time-evolution is performed with a collisional N-body integrator. This procedure allows to create a fully-coherent relation between the clumps' spatial distribution and the underlying velocity field. The cooling is driven by the gravitational field, as i…
We present new Plateau de Bure Interferometer observations of a region in the filamentary infrared-dark cloud (IRDC) G011.11-0.12 containing young, star-forming cores. In addition to the 3.2mm continuum emission from cold dust, we map this region in the N$_2$H$^+$(1-0) line to trace the core kinematics with an angular resolution of 2" and velocity resolution of 0.2km s$^{-1}$. These data are presented in concert with recent {\em Herschel} results, single-dish N$_2$H$^+$(1-0) data, SABOCA 350$μ$m continuum data, and maps of the C$^{18}$O (2-1) transition obtained with the IRAM 30m telescope. We…
We present a multi-wavelength data analysis of IRAS 05463+2652 (hereafter I05463+2652) to study star formation mechanisms. A shell-like structure around I05463+2652 is evident in the Herschel column density map, which is not associated with any ionized emission. Based on the Herschel sub-millimeter images, several parsec-scale filaments (including two elongated filaments, "s-fl" and "nw-fl" having lengths of ~6.4 pc and ~8.8 pc, respectively) are investigated in I05463+2652 site. Herschel temperature map depicts all these features in a temperature range of ~11-13 K. 39 clumps are identified an…
Young massive star clusters spanning $\sim 10^4 - 10^8 M_\odot$ in mass have been observed to have similar surface brightness profiles. Recent hydrodynamical simulations of star cluster formation have also produced star clusters with this structure. We argue analytically that this type of mass distribution arises naturally in the relaxation from a hierarchically-clustered distribution of stars into a monolithic star cluster through hierarchical merging. We show that arbitrary initial profiles will tend to converge to a universal profile under hierarchical merging, owing to phase-space mixing o…
We summarize some of the results obtained from Herschel surveys of the nearby star forming regions and the Galactic plane. We show that in the nearby star forming regions the starless core spatial surface density distribution is very similar to that of the young stellar objects. This, taken together with the similarity between the core mass function and the initial mass function for stars and the relationship between the amount of dense gas and star formation rate, suggest that the cloud fragmentation process defines the global outcome of star formation. This "simple" view of star formation ma…
Density probability distribution functions (PDFs) for turbulent self-gravitating clouds should be convolutions of the local log-normal PDF, which depends on the local average density rho-ave and Mach number M, and the probability distribution functions for rho-ave and M, which depend on the overall cloud structure. When self-gravity drives a cloud to increased central density, the total PDF develops an extended tail. If there is a critical density or column density for star formation, then the fraction of the local mass exceeding this threshold becomes higher near the cloud center. These eleme…
Sgr A$^*$ is the super massive black hole residing in the centre of the Milky Way. There is plenty of observational evidence that a massive gas cloud fell into the central parsec of the Milky Way $\sim 6$ million years ago, triggering formation of a disc of young stars and activating Sgr A$^*$. In addition to the disc, there is an unexplained population of young stars on randomly oriented orbits. Here we hypothesize that these young stars were formed by fragmentation of a massive quasi-spherical gas shell driven out from Sgr A$^*$ potential well by an energetic outflow. To account for the prop…
We investigate the nature of 4 young and low-mass open clusters (OCs) located in the $2^{nd}$ and $3^{rd}$ quadrants with near-IR 2MASS photometry (errors $<0.1$ mag). After field decontamination, the colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) display similar morphologies: a poorly-populated main sequence (MS) and a dominant fraction of pre-MS (PMS) stars somewhat affected by differential reddening. Pismis 5, vdB 80 and BDSB 96 have MS ages within $5\pm4$ Myr, while the MS of NGC 1931 is $10\pm3$ Myr old. However, non-instantaneous star formation is implied by the wider ($\sim20$ Myr) PMS age spread. Th…
Context: Around 30 per cent of the observed exoplanets that orbit M dwarf stars are gas giants that are more massive than Jupiter. These planets are prime candidates for formation by disc instability. Aims: We want to determine the conditions for disc fragmentation around M dwarfs and the properties of the planets that are formed by disc instability. Methods: We performed hydrodynamic simulations of M dwarf protostellar discs in order to determine the minimum disc mass required for gravitational fragmentation to occur. Different stellar masses, disc radii, and metallicities were considered. Th…
This paper aims to resolve the problem of formation of young objects observed in the RCW 82 H {\small II} region. In the framework of a classical trigger model the estimated time of fragmentation is larger than the estimated age of the H {\small II} region. Thus the young objects could not have formed during the dynamical evolution of the H {\small II} region. We propose a new model that helps resolve this problem. This model suggests that the H {\small II} region RCW 82 is embedded in a cloud of limited size that is denser than the surrounding interstellar medium. According to this model, whe…
We study the fragmentation of the nearest high line-mass filament, the integral shaped filament (ISF, line-mass $\sim$ 400 M$_\odot$ pc$^{-1}$) in the Orion A molecular cloud. We have observed a 1.6 pc long section of the ISF with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at 3 mm continuum emission, at a resolution of $\sim$3" (1 200 AU). We identify from the region 43 dense cores with masses about a solar mass. 60% of the ALMA cores are protostellar and 40\% are starless. The nearest neighbour separations of the cores do not show a preferred fragmentation scale; the frequency of…
Fragmentation of massive dense molecular clouds is the starting point in the formation of rich clusters and massive stars. Theory and numerical simulations indicate that the population of the fragments (number, mass, diameter, separation) resulting from the gravitational collapse of such clumps is probably regulated by the balance between the magnetic field and the other competitors of self-gravity, in particular turbulence and protostellar feedback. We have observed 11 massive, dense and young star-forming clumps with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in the thermal dust continuum emi…
There have been several recent detections of candidate Keplerian discs around massive young protostars. Given the relatively large disc-to-star mass ratios in these systems, and their young ages, it is worth investigating their propensity to becoming self-gravitating. To this end, we compute self-consistent, semi-analytic models of putative self-gravitating discs for five candidate disc systems. Our aim is not to fit exactly the observations, but to demonstrate that the expected dust continuum emission from marginally unstable self-gravitating discs can be quite weak, due to high optical depth…
It is known that massive stars form as result of the fragmentation of molecular clumps. However, what is not clear is whether this fragmentation gives rise to cores massive enough to form directly high-mass stars, or leads to cores of low and intermediate mass that generate massive stars acquiring material from their environment. Detailed studies towards clumps at early stages of star formation are needed to collect observational evidence that shed light on this issue. The infrared-quiet massive clump AGAL G035.1330-00.7450, located at a distance of 2.1 kpc, is a promising object to study both…
ALMAGAL VI. The spatial distribution of dense cores during the evolution of cluster-forming massive clump
Sapienza Università di Roma（罗马大学）；Physikalisches Institut der Universität zu Köln（科隆大学物理研究所）；Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC)（空间科学研究所（加泰罗尼亚高等研究理事会））；Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC)（加泰罗尼亚空间研究所）；Max Planck Institute for Astronomy（马克斯·普朗克天文学研究所）；Universität Heidelberg, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen（海德堡大学跨学科科学计算中心）；Center for Astrophysics,Harvard & Smithsonian（哈佛与史密森尼天体物理中心）；Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University（哈佛大学拉德克利夫高等研究院）；Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma Tor Vergata（罗马托维塔大学物理系）；SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research（荷兰空间研究所）；Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学卡普坦天体物理研究所）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Université Paris-Cité（巴黎西岱大学）
High-mass Stars are cosmic engines known to dominate the energetics in the Milky Way and other galaxies. However, their formation is still not well understood. Massive, cold, dense clouds, often appearing as Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs), are the nurseries of massive stars. No measurements of magnetic fields in IRDCs in a state prior to the onset of high-mass star formation (HMSF) have previously been available, and prevailing HMSF theories do not consider strong magnetic fields. Here, we report observations of magnetic fields in two of the most massive IRDCs in the Milky Way. We show that IRDC…
Solar-mass stars form via circumstellar disk accretion (disk-mediated accretion). Recent findings indicate that this process is likely episodic in the form of accretion bursts, possibly caused by disk fragmentation. Although it cannot be ruled out that high-mass young stellar objects (HMYSOs; $M>$8 M$_\odot$, $L_{bol}>$5$\times$10$^3$ L$_\odot$) arise from the coalescence of their low-mass brethren, latest results suggest that they more likely form via disks. Accordingly, disk-mediated accretion bursts should occur. Here we report on the discovery of the first disk-mediated accretion burst fro…
Based on a multiwavelength study, the interstellar medium and young stellar objects (YSOs) around the HII region Sh2-82 have been analyzed. Two molecular clumps were found from the archival data of the Galactic Ring Survey, and using the Two Micron All-Sky Survey catalog, we found two corresponding young clusters embedded in the molecular clumps. The very good relations between CO emission, infrared shells and YSOs suggest that it is probably a triggered star formation region from the expansion of Sh2-82. We further used the data from the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinair…
We present 1.3mm continuum and spectral line images of two massive molecular clumps P1 and P2 in the G28.34+0.06 region with the Submillimeter Array. While the two clumps contain masses of 1000 and 880 \msun, respectively, P1 has a luminosity $< 10^2$ \lsun, and a lower gas temperature and smaller line width than P2. Thus, P1 appears to be at a much earlier stage of massive star formation than P2. The high resolution SMA observations reveal two distinctive cores in P2 with masses of 97 and 49 \msun, respectively. The 4 GHz spectral bandpass captures line emission from CO isotopologues, SO, CH$…
In order to better understand the role of high-mass stellar feedback in regulating star formation in giant molecular clouds, we carried out a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury Program "Measuring Young Stars in Space and Time" (MYSST) targeting the star-forming complex N44 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Using the F555W and F814W broadband filters of both the ACS and WFC3/UVIS, we built a photometric catalog of 461,684 stars down to $m_\mathrm{F555W} \simeq 29$ mag and $m_\mathrm{F814W} \simeq 28$ mag, corresponding to the magnitude of an unreddened 1 Myr pre-main-sequence star of $\ap…
The strong time-dependence of the dynamics of galactic bars yields a complex and rapidly evolving distribution of dense gas and star forming regions. Although bars mainly host regions void of any star formation activity, their extremities can gather the physical conditions for the formation of molecular complexes and mini-starbursts. Using a sub-parsec resolution hydrodynamical simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy, we probe these conditions to explore how and where bar (hydro-)dynamics favours the formation or destruction of molecular clouds and stars. The interplay between the kpc-scale dyna…
Disc fragmentation. II. Ejection of low mass Free Floating Planets from growing binary systems
University of Leicester（莱斯特大学）；IRAP, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, CNES（法国图卢兹大学/国家科学研究中心/保罗·萨巴蒂尔大学）；University of Warwick（华威大学）；University of Zurich（苏黎世大学）
We present Plateau de Bure interferometer observations obtained in continuum at 1.3 and 3.5 mm towards the six most massive and young (IR-quiet) dense cores in Cygnus X. Located at only 1.7 kpc, the Cygnus X region offers the opportunity of reaching small enough scales (of the order of 1700 AU at 1.3 mm) to separate individual collapsing objects. The cores are sub-fragmented with a total of 23 fragments inside 5 cores. Only the most compact core, CygX-N63, could actually be a single massive protostar with an envelope mass as large as 60 Msun. The fragments in the other cores have sizes and sep…
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Milky Way shows several peculiar properties: a large star formation rate, some of the most massive young star clusters and molecular clouds in the Galaxy, and a twisted ring morphology in molecular gas. In this paper, I use SPH simulations to show that most of these properties can be explained as due to a recent outburst of AGN activity in Sgr A*, the central supermassive black hole of the Milky Way. In particular, the narrow ring of dense gas, massive gas clouds, young star clusters and an elevated SFR can all be caused by the passage of an AGN outflow …
A High Resolution View of Three Massive Young Stellar Objects in the Magellanic Clouds
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan（日本国立天文台）；Institute of Science Tokyo（东京科学大学）；Niigata University（新潟大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute（理化学研究所先锋研究本部）；Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE-CSIC)（空间科学研究所在（加泰罗尼亚高等科学研究院））
It is well known that most of the stars form in rich clusters. However, recent $Spitzer$ observations have shown that a significant number of stars also form in distributed mode, origin of which is not well understood. In this work, we aim to investigate clustered and distributed mode of star formation in the W4 complex. To do so, we identified and characterized the young stellar population associated with the region using homogeneous infra-red data-sets obtained from 2MASS, GLIMPSE, MIPS and WISE surveys. We make stellar surface density and minimum spanning tree maps to identify young cluster…
Young massive stars warm up the large amount of gas and dust which condenses in their vicinity, exciting a forest of lines from different molecular species. Their line brightness is a diagnostic tool of the gas physical conditions locally, which we use to set constraints on the environment where massive stars form. We made use of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at frequencies near 349 GHz, with an angular resolution of $0.1''$, to observe the methyl cyanide (CH$_3$CN) emission which arises from the accretion disk of a young massive star. We sample the disk midplane with twelve…
We present the stability analysis of two regions, OMC-3 and OMC-4, in the massive and long molecular cloud complex of Orion A. We obtained $214~μ$m HAWC+/SOFIA polarization data, and we make use of archival data for the column density and C$^{18}$O (1-0) emission line. We find clear depolarization in both observed regions and that the polarization fraction is anti-correlated with the column density and the polarization-angle dispersion function. We find that the filamentary cloud and dense clumps in OMC-3 are magnetically supercritical and strongly subvirial. This region should be in the gravi…
SONYC - Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters - is a survey program to investigate the frequency and properties of substellar objects with masses down to a few times that of Jupiter in nearby star-forming regions. For the ~1Myr old rho Ophiuchi cluster, in our earlier paper we reported deep, wide-field optical and near-infrared imaging using Subaru, combined with 2MASS and Spitzer photometry, as well as follow-up spectroscopy confirming three likely cluster members, including a new brown dwarf with a mass close to the deuterium-burning limit. Here we present the results of extensive new …
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key property of stellar populations. There is growing evidence that the classical star-formation mechanism by the direct cloud fragmentation process has difficulties reproducing the observed abundance and binary properties of brown dwarfs and very-low-mass stars. In particular, recent analytical derivations of the stellar IMF exhibit a deficit of brown dwarfs compared to observational data. Here we derive the residual mass function of brown dwarfs as an empirical measure of the brown dwarf deficiency in recent star-formation models with respect to o…
The environment surrounding Wolf-Rayet star HD 211853 is studied in molecular emission, infrared emission, as well as radio and HI emission. The molecular ring consists of well-separated cores, which have a volume density of 10$^{3}$ cm$^{-3}$ and kinematic temperature $\sim$20 K. Most of the cores are under gravitational collapse due to external pressure from the surrounding ionized gas. From SED modeling towards the young stellar objects (YSOs), sequential star formation is revealed on a large scale in space spreading from the Wolf-Rayet star to the molecular ring. A small scale sequential s…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are compact ($\lesssim$1 pc), high-mass (>10${}^4$ M${}_{\odot}$) stellar systems of significant scientific interest. Due to their rarity and rapid formation, we have very few examples of YMC progenitor gas clouds before star formation has begun. As a result, the initial conditions required for YMC formation are uncertain. We present high-resolution (0.13$^{\prime\prime}$, $\sim$1000 au) ALMA observations and Mopra single-dish data, showing that Galactic Centre dust ridge `Cloud d' (G0.412$+$0.052, mass$\sim 7.6 \times 10^4$ M$_{\odot}$, radius$\sim 3.2$ pc) has t…
Substellar companions at wide separation around stars hosting planets or brown dwarfs (BDs) yet close enough for their formation in the circumstellar disc are of special interest. In this letter we report the discovery of a wide (projected separation $\sim$16.0arcsec, or 2400 AU, and position angle 114.61$^\circ$) companion of the GQ Lup A-B system, most likely gravitationally bound to it. A VLT/X-Shooter spectrum shows that this star, 2MASS J15491331-3539118, is a bonafide low-mass ($\sim$0.15 M$_\odot$) young stellar object (YSO) with stellar and accretion/ejection properties typical of Lupu…
As part of the ongoing effort to characterize the low-mass (sub)stellar population in a sample of massive young clusters, we have targeted the ~2 Myr old cluster NGC 2244. The distance to NGC 2244 from Gaia DR2 parallaxes is 1.59 kpc, with errors of 1% (statistical) and 11% (systematic). We used the Flamingos-2 near-infrared camera at the Gemini-South telescope for deep multi-band imaging of the central portion of the cluster (~2.4pc^2). We determined membership in a statistical manner, through a comparison of the cluster's color-magnitude diagram to that of a control field. Masses and extinct…
