Imaging the jet of MWC 349A with resolved Radio Recombination Line emission from ALMA

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution ALMA observations of hydrogen radio recombination lines to resolve and analyze the ionized jet, disk, and wind around the massive star MWC 349A, revealing detailed structure and kinematics.

Contribution

First resolved imaging of RRL maser emission delineating the ionized structures around MWC 349A with detailed modeling.

Findings

The jet is poorly collimated.

Jet orientation is closer to the rotation axis.

Hydrogen RRL masers effectively probe inner ionized regions.

Abstract

Jets and disk winds arise from materials with excess angular momentum ejected from the accretion disks in forming stars. How these structures are launched and how they impact the gas within the innermost regions of these objects remains poorly understood. MWC349A is a massive star that has a circumstellar disk which rotates in accord with Kepler's Law, with an ionized wind and a high-velocity jet launched from the disk surface. The strongly maser-amplified emission of hydrogen radio recombination lines (RRLs) observed toward this system provides a comprehensive picture of its ionized environment with exquisite detail. In this Letter, we present ALMA observations of the H26$\alpha$ RRL and continuum emission obtained with the highest angular resolution ever used toward this source (beam of $\sim$0.02"). The maser RRL emission is resolved for the first time and clearly delineates the ionized disk, wind and jet. We analyzed the RRL data cubes with the 3D non-LTE radiative transfer model MORELI, confirming that the jet is poorly collimated. We found that the jet orientation is closer to the rotation axis of the system than derived from spatially unresolved data. This study confirms that hydrogen RRL masers are powerful probes of the physical structure and kinematics of the innermost ionized material around massive stars.