Synthetic Observations of the Infalling Rotating Envelope: Links between the Physical Structure and Observational Features

Abstract

We performed synthetic observations of the Ulrich, Cassen, and Moosman (UCM) model to understand the relation between the physical structures of the infalling envelope around a protostar and their observational features in molecular lines, adopting L1527 as an example. We also compared the physical structure and synthetic position–velocity ( P–V ) diagrams of the UCM model and a simple ballistic (SB) model. There are multiple ways to compare synthetic data with observational data. We first calculated the correlation coefficient. The UCM model and the SB model show similarly good correlation with the observational data. While the correlation reflects the overall similarity between the cube datasets, we can alternatively compare specific local features, such as the centrifugal barrier in the SB model or the centrifugal radius in the UCM model. We evaluated systematic uncertainties in these methods. In the case of L1527, the stellar mass values estimated using these methods are all lower than the value derived from previous Keplerian analysis of the disk. This may indicate that the gas infall motion in the envelope is retarded by, e.g., magnetic fields. We also showed analytically that, in the UCM model, the spin-up feature of the P–V diagram is due to the infall velocity rather than the rotation. The line-of-sight velocity V is thus ∝ x ^−0.5 , where x is the offset. If the infall is retarded, rotational velocity should dominate so that V is proportional to x ^−1 , as is often observed in the protostellar envelope.

Keywords

• Star formation
• Protostars
• Astrochemistry