Recent progress in high-mass star-formation studies with ALMA

TL;DR

Recent advances in high-mass star formation research leverage ALMA's high-resolution millimeter/submillimeter observations to overcome previous observational challenges, enabling detailed studies of molecular clouds, protostellar disks, and dynamic phenomena.

Contribution

This review summarizes recent progress in high-mass star formation studies using ALMA, highlighting new insights into structures, chemistry, and dynamic processes.

Findings

Detailed imaging of clumps and filaments in molecular clouds

Observations of protostellar disks and outflows in dense cores

Detection of chemical signatures and masers in high-mass star-forming regions

Abstract

Formation processes of high-mass stars have been long-standing issues in astronomy and astrophysics. This is mainly because of major difficulties in observational studies such as a smaller number of high-mass young stellar objects (YSOs), larger distances, and more complex structures in young high-mass clusters compared with nearby low-mass isolated star-forming regions (SFRs), and extremely large opacity of interstellar dust except for centimeter to submillimeter wavelengths. High resolution and high sensitivity observations with Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) at millimeter/submillimeter wavelengths will overcome these observational difficulties even for statistical studies with increasing number of high-mass YSO samples. This review will summarize recent progresses in high-mass star-formation studies with ALMA such as clumps and filaments in giant molecular cloud complexes and infrared dark clouds (IRDCs), protostellar disks and outflows in dense cores, chemistry, masers, and accretion bursts in high-mass SFRs.