Unraveling the inner substructure of new candidate hub-filament system in the HII region G25.4NW

TL;DR

This study investigates the complex hub-filament structure of the G25.4NW HII region using multi-wavelength data, revealing a cluster of massive stars and supporting a global non-isotropic collapse model for star formation.

Contribution

The paper provides detailed multi-scale observations of G25.4NW, demonstrating the applicability of the GNIC scenario in massive star formation within a hub-filament system.

Findings

Identification of a hub-filament structure with five filaments and a central hub.

Detection of four ionized clumps powered by OB-stars.

Discovery of a small cluster of massive stars and cores within the hub.

Abstract

We present multi-scale and multi-wavelength data of the Galactic HII region G25.4-0.14 (hereafter G25.4NW, distance ~5.7 kpc). The SHARC-II 350 micron continuum map displays a hub-filament configuration containing five parsec scale filaments and a central compact hub. Through the 5 GHz radio continuum map, four ionized clumps (i.e., Ia-Id) are identified toward the central hub, and are powered by massive OB-stars. The Herschel temperature map depicts the warm dust emission (i.e., Td ~23-39 K) toward the hub. High resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 1.3 mm continuum map (resolution ~0".82 X 0".58) reveals three cores (c1-c3; mass ~80-130 Msun) toward the ionized clumps Ia, and another one (c4; mass ~70 Msun) toward the ionized clump Ib. A compact near-infrared (NIR) emission feature (extent ~0.2 pc) is investigated toward the ionized clump Ia excited by an O8V-type star, and contains at least three embedded K-band stars. In the direction of the ionized clump Ia, the ALMA map also shows an elongated feature (extent ~0.2 pc) hosting the cores c1-c3. All these findings together illustrate the existence of a small cluster of massive stars in the central hub. Considering the detection of the hub-filament morphology and the spatial locations of the mm cores, a global non-isotropic collapse (GNIC) scenario appears to be applicable in G25.4NW, which includes the basic ingredients of the global hierarchical collapse and clump-fed accretion models. Overall, the GNIC scenario explains the birth of massive stars in G25.4NW.