English

Protostellar cores in Sagittarius B2 N and M

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-09-27 v1

Abstract

We present 500 AU and 700 AU resolution 1 mm and 3 mm ALMA observations, respectively, of protostellar cores in protoclusters Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) North (N) and Main (M), parts of the most actively star-forming cloud in our Galaxy. Previous lower resolution (5000 AU) 3 mm observations of this region detected \sim150 sources inferred to be young stellar objects (YSOs) with M>8MM>8\mathrm{\,M}_\odot. With a tenfold increase in resolution, we detect 371 sources at 3 mm and 218 sources in the smaller field of view at 1 mm. The sources seen at low resolution are observed to fragment into an average of two objects. About a third of the observed sources fragment. Most of the sources we report are marginally resolved and are at least partially optically thick. We determine that the observed sources are most consistent with Stage 0/I YSOs, i.e., rotationally supported disks with an active protostar and an envelope, that are warmer than those observed in the solar neighborhood. We report source-counting-based inferred stellar mass and the star formation rate of the cloud: 2800M\mathrm{\,M}_\odot, 0.0038M\mathrm{\,M}_\odot yr1^{-1} for Sgr B2 N and 6900M\mathrm{\,M}_\odot, 0.0093M\mathrm{\,M}_\odot yr1^{-1} for Sgr B2 M respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.14407,
  title  = {Protostellar cores in Sagittarius B2 N and M},
  author = {Nazar Budaiev and Adam Ginsburg and Desmond Jeff and Ciriaco Goddi and Fanyi Meng and Álvaro Sánchez-Monge and Peter Schilke and Anika Schmiedeke and Taehwa Yoo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.14407},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

31 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ (September 15, 2023)