Multiplicity, Disks and Jets in the NGC 2071 Star-Forming Region

TL;DR

This study uses centimeter and millimeter observations to analyze the multiplicity, disks, and jets in the NGC 2071 star-forming region, revealing complex morphologies, potential binary systems, and evidence of jet activity and circumstellar disks around young stellar objects.

Contribution

It provides high-resolution radio observations that identify multiple YSOs, their jet structures, and associated disks, offering new insights into the morphology and dynamics of star formation in NGC 2071.

Findings

Detection of known sources with free-free and dust emission

Identification of jet-like morphology and binary components

Evidence of circumstellar disks around YSOs

Abstract

We present centimeter and millimeter observations of the NGC 2071 star-forming region performed with the VLA and CARMA. We detected counterparts at 3.6 cm and 3 mm for the previously known sources IRS 1, IRS 2, IRS 3, and VLA 1. All these sources show SEDs dominated by free-free thermal emission at cm wavelengths, and thermal dust emission at mm wavelengths, suggesting that all of them are associated with YSOs. IRS 1 shows a complex morphology at 3.6 cm, with changes in the direction of its elongation. We discuss two possible explanations to this morphology: the result of changes in the direction of a jet due to interactions with a dense ambient medium, or that we are actually observing the superposition of two jets arising from two components of a binary system. Higher angular resolution observations at 1.3 cm support the second possibility, since a double source is inferred at this wavelength. IRS 3 shows a clear jet-like morphology at 3.6 cm. Over a time-span of four years, we observed changes in the morphology of this source that we interpret as due to ejection of ionized material in a jet. The emission at 3 mm of IRS 3 is angularly resolved, with a deconvolved size (FWHM) of ~120 AU, and seems to be tracing a dusty circumstellar disk perpendicular to the radio jet. An irradiated accretion disk model around an intermediate-mass YSO can account for the observed SED and spatial intensity profile at 3 mm, supporting this interpretation.