Accretion bursts in high-mass protostars: a new testbed for models of episodic accretion

TL;DR

This study uses 1D models to explore episodic accretion in high-mass protostars, finding that planetary tidal disruptions match observed burst properties better than disc instabilities, which are too prolonged and weak.

Contribution

It demonstrates that tidal disruptions of gaseous planets formed by gravitational instability can explain observed accretion bursts in high-mass protostars, unlike traditional disc instability models.

Findings

Disc around HMYSOs are hotter, prone to thermal and MRI instabilities.

Disc instabilities produce outbursts too long and weak compared to observations.

Tidal disruption of gaseous planets matches observed burst properties.

Abstract

It is well known that low mass young stellar objects (LMYSOs) gain a significant portion of their final mass through episodes of very rapid accretion, with mass accretion rates up to $\dot M_* \sim 10^{-4} M_{\odot}$~yr$^{-1}$. Recent observations of high mass young stellar objects (HMYSO) with masses $M_* \gtrsim 10 M_{\odot}$ uncovered outbursts with accretion rates exceeding $\dot M_*\sim 10^{-3}M_{\odot}$~yr$^{-1}$. Here we examine which scenarios proposed in the literature so far to explain accretion bursts of LMYSOs can apply to the episodic accretion in HMYSOs. We utilise a 1D time dependent models of protoplanetary discs around HMYSOs to study burst properties. We find that discs around HMYSOs are much hotter than those around their low mass cousins. As a result, much more extended regions of the disc are prone to the thermal hydrogen ionisation and MRI activation instabilities. The former in particular is found to be ubiquitous in a very wide range of accretion rates and disc viscosity parameters. The outbursts triggered by these instabilities, however, always have too low $\dot M_*$, and are one to several orders of magnitude too long compared to those observed from HMYSOs so far. On the other hand, bursts generated by tidal disruptions of gaseous giant planets formed by the gravitational instability of the protoplanetary discs yield properties commensurate with observations, provided that the clumps are in the post-collapse configuration with planet radius $R_{\rm p} \gtrsim 10 $ Jupiter radii. Furthermore, if observed bursts are caused by disc ionisation instabilities then they should be periodic phenomena with the duration of the quiescent phase comparable to that of the bursts. This may yield potentially observable burst periodicity signatures in the jets, the outer disc, or the surrounding diffuse material of massive HMYSOs. (abridged)