Digging into the Interior of Hot Cores with ALMA (DIHCA). VII. Disk candidates around high-mass stars and evidence of anisotropic infall

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution ALMA observations to identify and analyze 32 disk candidates around high-mass stars, revealing their rotation profiles, masses, and gravitational stability, and providing insights into high-mass star formation processes.

Contribution

It presents the largest uniform analysis of disk candidates around high-mass stars at hundreds of au scales, including velocity gradient characterization and evidence of anisotropic infall.

Findings

32 disk candidates identified with asymmetric velocity gradients.

Median rotation index of -0.7 suggests a mix of Keplerian and angular momentum conserving rotation.

Most disks are gravitationally unstable with a median Toomre-Q of 0.5.

Abstract

We study the kinematics of condensations in 30 fields forming high-mass stars with ALMA at a high-resolution of ~0.08'' on average (~230 au). The presence of disks is important for feeding high-mass stars without feedback halting growth as their masses increase. In the search for velocity gradients resembling rotation that can reveal the presence of disks, we analyze the emission of gas tracers in 49 objects using CH$_3$OH, CH$_3$CN, and tentative detections of HNCO and cis-HCOOH. Most of the velocity distributions show velocity gradients indicative of rotation. We reveal a total of 32 disk candidates, the largest sample to date that has been uniformly analyzed at a few hundred au scales in the high-mass regime. Their position-velocity maps are generally asymmetric with one side brighter than the opposite. We successfully fit a power law to the position-velocity maps of the disk candidates and find indices between -0.5 (Keplerian rotation) and -1 (rotation under specific angular momentum conservation) with a median of -0.7. Under Keplerian rotation assumption, we estimate central masses, uncorrected for inclination, ranging between 7 to 45 M$_\odot$. Excluding outliers, the disk candidates are relatively more compact (<200 au) and less massive (<5 M$_\odot$) than previous results at coarser angular resolution. We calculate an average Toomre-$Q$ parameter and find that most are gravitationally unstable (median of 0.5). We conclude that these observations offer the first opportunity to separate the disk and envelope components of hot cores on a statistically significant sample, and confirm that anisotropic collapse plays an role in feeding high-mass (proto)stars.