Protostellar and Protoplanetary Disk Masses in the Serpens Region

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations to analyze disk dust masses and protostellar outflows in the Serpens star-forming region, revealing evolutionary trends and environmental influences on disk properties.

Contribution

First comprehensive ALMA survey of the Serpens region, providing new insights into disk mass evolution and protostellar outflows in a large star-forming area.

Findings

Disk dust masses decline from Class I to Class II sources.

Disk mass distributions are similar to other young regions, unaffected by environment.

Identified a new deeply embedded protostar and cataloged 15 protostellar outflows.

Abstract

We present the results from an Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) 1.3 mm continuum and $^{12}$CO ($J=2-1$) line survey spread over 10 square degrees in the Serpens star-forming region of 320 young stellar objects, 302 of which are likely members of Serpens (16 Class I, 35 Flat spectrum, 235 Class II, and 16 Class III). From the continuum data, we derive disk dust masses and show that they systematically decline from Class I to Flat spectrum to Class II sources. Grouped by stellar evolutionary state, the disk mass distributions are similar to other young ($<3$ Myr) regions, indicating that the large scale environment of a star-forming region does not strongly affect its overall disk dust mass properties. These comparisons between populations reinforce previous conclusions that disks in the Ophiuchus star-forming region have anomalously low masses at all evolutionary stages. Additionally, we find a single deeply embedded protostar that has not been documented elsewhere in the literature and, from the CO line data, 15 protostellar outflows which we catalog here.