Hierarchical Fragmentation of the Orion Molecular Filaments

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution submillimeter observations to analyze the hierarchical fragmentation and star formation activity within the Orion Molecular Cloud-3 filament, revealing multiple scales of structure and potential fragmentation mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides detailed high-resolution mapping of OMC-3, identifying multiple sources and hierarchical fragmentation scales, and discusses possible physical processes influencing fragmentation.

Findings

12 resolved continuum sources detected with masses 0.3-5.7 solar masses.

Hierarchical fragmentation spans scales from 0.3 to 35 parsecs.

Evidence suggests thermal fragmentation, magnetic fields, and rotation influence core spacing.

Abstract

We present a high angular resolution map of 850 um continuum emission of the Orion Molecular Cloud-3 (OMC 3) obtained with the Submillimeter Array (SMA); the map is a mosaic of 85 pointings covering an approximate area of 6'.5 x 2'.0 (0.88 x 0.27 pc). We detect 12 spatially resolved continuum sources, each with an H_2 mass between 0.3-5.7 Mo and a projected source size between 1400-8200 AU. All the detected sources are on the filamentary main ridge n_H2>10^6 cm^-3), and analysis based on the Jeans theorem suggests that they are most likely gravitationally unstable. Comparison of multi-wavelength data sets indicates that of the continuum sources, 6/12 (50 %) are associated with molecular outflows, 8/12 (67 %) are associated with infrared sources, and 3/12 (25 %) are associated with ionized jets. The evolutionary status of these sources ranges from prestellar cores to protostar phase, confirming that OMC-3 is an active region with ongoing embedded star-formation. We detect quasi-periodical separations between the OMC-3 sources of ~17"/0.035 pc. This spatial distribution is part of a large hierarchical structure, that also includes fragmentation scales of GMC (~35 pc), large-scale clumps (~1.3 pc), and small-scale clumps (~0.3 pc), suggesting that hierarchical fragmentation operates within the Orion A molecular cloud. The fragmentation spacings are roughly consistent with the thermal fragmentation length in large-scale clumps, while for small-scale cores it is smaller than the local fragmentation length. These smaller spacings observed with the SMA can be explained by either a helical magnetic field, cloud rotation, or/and global filament collapse. Finally, possible evidence for sequential fragmentation is suggested in the northern part of the OMC-3 filament.