A Pan-Carina YSO Catalog: Intermediate-Mass Young Stellar Objects in the Carina Nebula Identified Via Mid-Infrared Excess Emission

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalog of 1439 intermediate-mass young stellar objects in the Carina Nebula, identified via mid-infrared excess emission, and analyzes their properties, X-ray associations, and implications for star formation activity.

Contribution

The study provides the first large-scale catalog of intermediate-mass YSOs in Carina, combining infrared and X-ray data to analyze their physical properties and evolution.

Findings

Dominance of intermediate-mass YSOs with disks in the catalog.

Identification of 1029 YSOs without X-ray detection.

Evidence that X-ray emission in intermediate-mass YSOs is linked to early evolutionary stages.

Abstract

We present a catalog of 1439 young stellar objects (YSOs) spanning the 1.42 deg^2 field surveyed by the Chandra Carina Complex Project (CCCP), which includes the major ionizing clusters and the most active sites of ongoing star formation within the Great Nebula in Carina. Candidate YSOs were identified via infrared (IR) excess emission from dusty circumstellar disks and envelopes, using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope Vela--Carina survey and the Two-Micron All Sky Survey. We model the 1--24 /mu m IR spectral energy distributions of the YSOs to constrain physical properties. Our Pan-Carina YSO Catalog (PCYC) is dominated by intermediate-mass (2 Msun < m < 10 Msun) objects with disks, including Herbig Ae/Be stars and their less evolved progenitors. The PCYC provides a valuable complementary dataset to the CCCP X-ray source catalogs, identifying 1029 YSOs in Carina with no X-ray detection. We also catalog 410 YSOs with X-ray counterparts, including 62 candidate protostars. Candidate protostars with X-ray detections tend to be more evolved than those without. In most cases, X-ray emission apparently originating from intermediate-mass, disk-dominated YSOs is consistent with the presence of low-mass companions, but we also find that X-ray emission correlates with cooler stellar photospheres and higher disk masses. We suggest that intermediate-mass YSOs produce X-rays during their early pre-main sequence evolution, perhaps driven by magnetic dynamo activity during the convective atmosphere phase, but this emission dies off as the stars approach the main sequence. Extrapolating over the stellar initial mass function scaled to the PCYC population, we predict a total population of >2x10^4 YSOs and a present-day star formation rate (SFR) of >0.008 Msun/yr. The global SFR in the Carina Nebula, averaged over the past ~5 Myr, has been approximately constant.