Digging into the Interior of Hot Cores with ALMA: Spiral Accretion into the High-mass Protostellar Core G336.01–0.82

Abstract

We observed the high-mass star-forming core G336.01–0.82 at 1.3 mm and 0.″05 (∼150 au) angular resolution with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) as part of the Digging into the Interior of Hot Cores with ALMA survey. These high-resolution observations reveal two spiral streamers feeding a circumstellar disk at opposite sides in great detail. Molecular line emission from CH _3 OH shows velocity gradients along the streamers consistent with infall. Similarly, a flattened envelope model with rotation and infall implies a mass larger than 10 M _☉ for the central source and a centrifugal barrier of 300 au. The location of the centrifugal barrier is consistent with local peaks in the continuum emission. We argue that gas brought by the spiral streamers is accumulating at the centrifugal barrier, which can result in future accretion burst events. A total high infall rate of ∼4 × 10 ^−4 M _☉ yr ^−1 is derived by matching models to the observed velocity gradient along the streamers. Their contribution accounts for 20%–50% the global infall rate of the core, indicating streamers play an important role in the formation of high-mass stars.

Keywords

• Star formation
• Star forming regions
• Massive stars