Surveys of clumps, cores, and condensations in Cygnus-X: Searching for Keplerian disks on the scale of 500 au

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Pan, Xing, Qiu, Keping, Zhang, Qizhou
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Pan, Xing
Qiu, Keping
Zhang, Qizhou
author_facet Pan, Xing
Qiu, Keping
Zhang, Qizhou
contents Over the past decades, observational evidence of circumstellar disks around massive protostars has been steadily accumulating. However, there have also been cases of non-detections in high-mass star-forming regions, leaving the role and prevalence of disks around massive protostars still uncertain. We used high-resolution (0.2") NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) observations to study the 1.3 mm continuum and molecular line emission of five massive dense cores in the Cygnus-X cloud complex. Four cores host 2000-au-scale rotating structures previously identified as disk candidates in lower-resolution SMA observations, while the remaining core with no evidence for a disk serves as a comparison. With a resolution of 300 au, the 1.3 mm continuum emission reveals varying levels of fragmentation in our sample, with fragment radii ranging from 150 to 800 AU. In this work, we confirm the existence of two small, stable disks in Keplerian-like rotation at scales of 500 au out of four previously identified disk candidates from the SMA observations at coarser resolution. The lack of evidence for Keplerian disks in other disk candidates identified from the SMA data suggests that rotational signatures observed at 2000 au scales do not necessarily imply the presence of Keplerian disks at smaller scales. Therefore, higher-resolution and higher-sensitivity observations are essential to definitively identify Keplerian disks on smaller scales.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16712
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Surveys of clumps, cores, and condensations in Cygnus-X: Searching for Keplerian disks on the scale of 500 au
Pan, Xing
Qiu, Keping
Zhang, Qizhou
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Over the past decades, observational evidence of circumstellar disks around massive protostars has been steadily accumulating. However, there have also been cases of non-detections in high-mass star-forming regions, leaving the role and prevalence of disks around massive protostars still uncertain. We used high-resolution (0.2") NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) observations to study the 1.3 mm continuum and molecular line emission of five massive dense cores in the Cygnus-X cloud complex. Four cores host 2000-au-scale rotating structures previously identified as disk candidates in lower-resolution SMA observations, while the remaining core with no evidence for a disk serves as a comparison. With a resolution of 300 au, the 1.3 mm continuum emission reveals varying levels of fragmentation in our sample, with fragment radii ranging from 150 to 800 AU. In this work, we confirm the existence of two small, stable disks in Keplerian-like rotation at scales of 500 au out of four previously identified disk candidates from the SMA observations at coarser resolution. The lack of evidence for Keplerian disks in other disk candidates identified from the SMA data suggests that rotational signatures observed at 2000 au scales do not necessarily imply the presence of Keplerian disks at smaller scales. Therefore, higher-resolution and higher-sensitivity observations are essential to definitively identify Keplerian disks on smaller scales.
title Surveys of clumps, cores, and condensations in Cygnus-X: Searching for Keplerian disks on the scale of 500 au
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16712