Water in star-forming regions with Herschel: highly excited molecular emission from the NGC 1333 IRAS 4B outflow

TL;DR

This study uses Herschel observations to identify highly excited water emission originating from the outflow in the NGC 1333 IRAS 4B star-forming region, revealing two physical components and their spatial distribution.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed far-IR spectral and spatial analysis of water emission in a Class 0 protostar, clarifying its origin in outflows rather than envelope-disk accretion shocks.

Findings

Highly excited H2O emission is associated with outflows.

Two physical components with different temperatures and densities are identified.

Far-IR H2O dominates gas cooling in the envelope cavity walls.

Abstract

During the embedded phase of pre-main sequence stellar evolution, a disk forms from the dense envelope while an accretion-driven outflow carves out a cavity within the envelope. Highly excited H2O emission in spatially unresolved Spitzer/IRS spectra of a low-mass Class 0 object, NGC 1333 IRAS 4B, has previously been attributed to the envelope-disk accretion shock but could instead be produced in an outflow. As part of the survey of low-mass sources in the Water in Star Forming Regions with Herschel (WISH-LM) program, we used Herschel/PACS to obtain a far-IR spectrum and several Nyquist-sampled spectral images with to determine the origin of excited H2O emission from NGC 1333 IRAS 4B. The spectrum has high signal-to-noise in a rich forest of H2O, CO, and OH lines, providing a near-complete census of far-IR molecular emission from a Class 0 protostar. The excitation diagrams for the three molecules all require fits with two excitation temperatures, indicating the presence of two physical components. The highly excited component of H2O emission is characterized by subthermal excitation of 1500 K gas with a density of 10^5 - 10^7 cm-3, conditions that also reproduce the mid-IR H2O emission detected by Spitzer. On the other hand, a high density, low temperature gas can reproduce the H2O spectrum observed by Spitzer but underpredicts the H2O lines seen by Herschel. Nyquist-sampled spectral maps of several lines show two spatial components of H2O emission, one centered at 1200 AU south of the central source at the position of the blueshifted outflow lobe and a second centered on-source. Both spatial components of the far-IR H2O emission are consistent with emission from the outflow. The gas cooling from the IRAS 4B envelope cavity walls is dominated by far-IR H2O emission, in contrast to stronger [O I] and CO cooling from more evolved protostars. [one sentence truncated]