High Mass Inner Regions Found in Five Outbursting Sources

Abstract

Young stellar objects are thought to commonly undergo sudden accretion events that result in a rise in bolometric luminosity. These outbursts likely coincide with the onset of planet formation and could impact the formation of planets. The reason behind this dramatic enhancement of accretion is an active area of research, and the mass of the system is a critical parameter. Using the Northern Extended Millimeter Array, we survey five outbursting sources (three FU Ori, one EX Or, and one “peculiar” source) with the primary goal of determining the system’s mass using an optically thin line of CO. We estimate the mass of a central region for each object that using both continuum emission and C ^17 O J = 2-1. The C ^17 O emission likely includes both disk and inner envelope material, thus acts as an upper limit on the disk mass, ranging from 0.33 to 3.4 M _⊙ for our sources. These derived masses suggest that the inner ∼1000 au contains enough mass along the line of sight for these sources to be gravitationally unstable.

Keywords

• Protoplanetary disks
• Young stellar objects
• FU Orionis stars
• Submillimeter astronomy
• Interferometry