Most stars form in multiple star systems. For a better understanding of their formation processes, it is important to resolve the individual protostellar components and the surrounding envelope and disk material at the earliest possible formation epoch because the formation history can be lost in a few orbital timescales. Here we present the ALMA observational results of a young multiple protostellar system, IRAS 04239+2436, where three well-developed large spiral arms were detected in the shocked SO emission. Along the most conspicuous arm, the accretion streamer was also detected in the SO2 emission. The observational results are complemented by numerical magneto-hydrodynamic simulations, where those large arms only appear in magnetically weakened clouds. The numerical simulations also suggest that the large triple spiral arms are the result of gravitational interactions between compact triple protostars and the turbulent infalling envelope.
@article{arxiv.2306.06572,
title = {Triple spiral arms of a triple protostar system imaged in molecular lines},
author = {Jeong-Eun Lee and Tomoaki Matsumoto and Hyun-Jeong Kim and Seokho Lee and Daniel Harsono and Jaehan Bae and Neal J. Evans and Shu-ichiro Inutsuka and Minho Choi and Ken'ichi Tatematsu and Jae-Joon Lee and Dan Jaffe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.06572},
year = {2023}
}