An ALMA study of outflow parameters of protoclusters: outflow feedback to maintain the turbulence

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations to analyze outflow parameters in massive protoclusters, revealing their role in sustaining turbulence but not generating it, with implications for star formation processes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of outflow properties in massive protoclusters, highlighting their feedback role in turbulence maintenance.

Findings

Outflows are mostly young with dynamical timescales of 10^2-10^4 years.

Outflow rates decrease with time, suggesting evolving feedback.

Outflows can sustain but not generate turbulence in protoclusters.

Abstract

With the aim of understanding the role of outflows in star formation, we performed a statistical study of the physical parameters of outflows in eleven massive protoclusters associated with ultra-compact HII regions. A total of 106 outflow lobes are identified in these protoclusters using the ALMA CO (3-2), HCN (4-3) and HCO+ (4-3) line observations. Although the position angles of outflow lobes do not differ in these three tracers, HCN and HCO+ tend to detect lower terminal velocity of the identified outflows compared to CO. The majority of the outflows in our targets are young with typical dynamical time-scales of 10^2-10^4 years, and are mostly composed of low-mass outflows along with at least one high-mass outflow in each target. An anti-correlation of outflow rate with dynamical time-scale indicates that the outflow rate possibly decreases with time. Also, a rising trend of dynamical time-scale with the mass of the associated core hints that the massive cores might have longer accretion histories than the low mass cores. Estimation of different energies in these protoclusters shows that outflows studied here cannot account for the generation of the observed turbulence, but can sustain the turbulence at the current epoch as the energy injection rate from the outflows is similar to the estimated dissipation rate.