Infall and outflow within 400 AU from a high-mass protostar. 3-D velocity fields from methanol and water masers in AFLG 5142

TL;DR

This study uses VLBI observations of methanol and water masers to directly measure infall and outflow dynamics within 400 AU of a high-mass protostar, providing new insights into early star formation processes.

Contribution

First direct measurement of infall of a molecular envelope onto a high-mass protostar using maser observations at small radii.

Findings

Detected infall of molecular gas at 300 AU with 5 km/s velocity.

Identified a collimated bipolar outflow and ionized jet from the protostar.

Estimated an infall rate of 0.0006 n_8 Msun/year.

Abstract

Observational signatures of infalling envelopes and outflowing material in early stages of protostellar evolution, and at small radii from the protostar, are essential to progress in the understanding of the mass-accretion process in star formation. In this letter, we report a detailed study of the accretion and outflow structure around a protostar in the well-known high-mass star-forming region AFGL 5142. We focus on the mm source MM-1, which exhibits hot-core chemistry, radio continuum emission, and strong water and methanol masers. Remarkably, our Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations of molecular masers over six years provided us with the 3-D velocity field of circumstellar molecular gas with a resolution of 0.001-0.005 arcseconds and at radii <0.23 arcseconds (or 400 AU) from the protostar. In particular, our measurements of methanol maser emission enabled, for the first time, a direct measurement of infall of a molecular envelope (radius of 300 AU and velocity of 5 km/s) onto an intermediate- to high-mass protostar. We estimate an infall rate of 0.0006 n_8 Msun/year, where n_8 is the ambient volume density in units of 10^8 cm-3 (required for maser excitation). In addition, our measurements of water maser (and radio continuum) emission identify a collimated bipolar molecular outflow (and ionized jet) from MM-1. The evidence of simultaneous accretion and outflow at small spatial scales, makes AFGL 5142 an extremely compelling target for high-angular resolution studies of high-mass star formation.