The ALMA-ATOMS Survey: Exploring Protostellar Outflows in HC$_3$N

TL;DR

This study uses HC$_3$N to systematically investigate bipolar outflows in 146 massive star-forming regions, revealing HC$_3$N as an effective tracer for both low- and high-velocity outflow components across different evolutionary stages.

Contribution

First systematic survey demonstrating HC$_3$N as an unbiased and effective tracer for bipolar outflows in massive star-forming regions, especially for low-velocity components.

Findings

Identified 44 bipolar and 1 explosive outflow in HC$_3$N.

HC$_3$N performs better than SiO in detecting low-velocity outflows.

Outflow parameters correlate moderately with clump mass and luminosity.

Abstract

We present the first systematic study of bipolar outflows using HC$_3$N as a tracer in a sample of 146 massive star-forming regions from ALMA-ATOMS survey. Protostellar outflows arise at the initial stage of star formation as a consequence of active accretion. In general, these outflows play a pivotal role in regulating the star formation processes by injecting energetic material in the parent molecular clouds. In such process, lower velocity components of outflows contain a significant portion of the energy. However, extraction of those component is difficult as the corresponding gas is often mixed with that of the ambient cloud. In our sample, we identified 44 bipolar outflows and one explosive outflow in HC$_3$N (J=11--10). The host clumps of these outflows are found to be at different evolutionary stages, suggesting that outflows in HC$_3$N are detectable in different stages of star formation. Also, the non-correlation of HC$_3$N outflows with clump evolutionary stages suggests that HC$_3$N is an unbiased tracer of outflows. Analyses revealed that HC$_3$N performs slightly better in detecting low-velocity components of outflows than traditionally employed tracers like SiO. The derived outflow parameters (i.e outflow mass, momentum, and energy) show moderate correlations with clump mass and luminosity. Our analysis of outflow opening angles and position-velocity diagrams across the outflow lobes show that, HC$_3$N is not only a good tracer of low-velocity outflows, but can also detect high-velocity collimated outflows. Overall, this study indicates that HC$_3$N can be used as a complementary outflow tracer along with the traditionally known outflow tracers, particularly in the detection of the low-velocity components of outflows.