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We present a 0.15$^{primeprime}$ resolution (21 au) ALMA 870 $mu$m continuum survey of 25 pointings containing 31 young stellar objects in the Ophiuchus molecular clouds. Using the dust continuum as a proxy for dust mass and circumstellar disk radius in our sample, we report a mean mass of 2.8$^{+2.1}_{-1.3}$ and 2.5$^{+9.2}_{-1.1}$ M$_{oplus}$ and a mean radii of 23.5$^{+1.8}_{-1.2}$ and 16.5$^{+2.8}_{-0.9}$ au, for Class I and Flat spectrum protostars, respectively. In addition, we calculate the multiplicity statistics of the dust surrounding young stellar objects in Ophiuchus. The multiplicity fraction (MF) and companion star fraction (CSF) of the combined Class I and Flats based solely on this work is 0.25 $pm$ 0.09 and 0.33 $pm$ 0.10, respectively, which are consistent with the values for Perseus and Orion. While we see clear differences in mass and radius between the Ophiuchus and Perseus/Orion protostellar surveys, we do not see any significant differences in the multiplicities of the various regions. We posit there are some differences in the conditions for star formation in Ophiuchus that strongly affects disk size (and consequently disk mass), but does not affect system multiplicity, which could imply important variation in planet formation processes.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of 1.1 mm dust continuum and CO 2-1 emission toward six dense cores within the Ophiuchus molecular cloud. We detect compact, sub-arcsecond continuum structures toward three targets, two of which (Oph A N6 and SM1) are located in the Ophiuchus A ridge. Two targets, SM1 and GSS 30, contain two compact sources within the ALMA primary beam. We argue that several of the compact structures are small ($R lesssim 80$ au) accretion disks around young protostars, due to their resolved, elongated structures, coincident radio and x-ray detections, or bipolar outflow detections. While CO line wings extend to $pm 10-20$ km s$^{-1}$ for the more evolved sources GSS 30 IRS3 and IRS1, CO emission toward other sources, where detected, only extends a few km s$^{-1}$ from the cloud $v_mathrm{LSR}$. The dust spectral index toward the compact objects suggests that the disks are either optically thick at 1.1 mm, or that significant grain growth has already occurred. We identify, for the first time, a single compact continuum source ($R sim 100$ au) toward N6 embedded within a larger continuum structure. SM1N is extended in the continuum but is highly centrally concentrated, with a density profile that follows a $r^{-1.3}$ power law within 200 au, and additional structure suggested by the uv-data. Both N6 and SM1N show no clear bipolar outflows with velocities greater than a few km s$^{-1}$ from the cloud velocity. These sources are candidates to be the youngest protostars or first hydrostatic cores in the Ophiuchus molecular cloud.
We present 0.25 arcsec resolution (35 au) ALMA 1.3 mm dust polarization observations for 37 young stellar objects (YSOs) in the Ophiuchus cloud. These data encompass all the embedded protostars in the cloud and several Flat and Class II objects to produce the largest, homogeneous study of dust polarization on disk scales to date. The goal of this study is to study dust polarization down to disk scales. We find that 14/37 (38%) of the YSOs are detected in polarization. Nine of these sources have uniform polarization angles and four sources have azimuthal polarization. The sources with uniform polarization tend to have steeper inclinations (> 60 degree) than those with azimuthal polarization (< 60 degree). The majority (9/14) of the detected sources have polarization morphologies and disk properties consistent with dust self-scattering in optically thick disks. The remaining sources may be instead tracing magnetic fields. Their inferred field directions from rotating the polarization vectors by 90 degree are mainly poloidal or hourglass shaped. We find no evidence of a strong toroidal field component toward any of our disks. For the 23 YSOs that are undetected in polarization, roughly half of them have 3-sigma upper limits of < 2%. These sources also tend to have inclinations < 60 degree and they are generally compact. Since lower inclination sources tend to have azimuthal polarization, these YSOs may be undetected in polarization due to unresolved polarization structure within our beam. We propose that disks with inclinations > 60 degree are the best candidates for future polarization studies of dust self-scattering as these systems will generally show uniform polarization vectors that do not require very high resolution to resolve. We release the continuum and polarization images for all the sources with this publication. Data from the entire survey can be obtained from Dataverse.
We present high resolution (~ 30 au) ALMA Band 6 dust polarization observations of VLA 1623. The VLA 1623 data resolve compact ~ 40 au inner disks around the two protobinary sources, VLA 1623-A and VLA 1623-B, and also an extended ~ 180 au ring of dust around VLA 1623-A. This dust ring was previously identified as a large disk in lower-resolution observations. We detect highly structured dust polarization toward the inner disks and the extended ring with typical polarization fractions ~ 1.7% and ~ 2.4%, respectively. The two components also show distinct polarization morphologies. The inner disks have uniform polarization angles aligned with their minor axes. This morphology is consistent with expectations from dust scattering. By contrast, the extended dust ring has an azimuthal polarization morphology not previously seen in lower-resolution observations. We find that our observations are well fit by a static, oblate spheroid model with a flux-frozen, poloidal magnetic field. We propose that the polarization traces magnetic grain alignment likely from flux freezing on large scales and magnetic diffusion on small scales. Alternatively, the azimuthal polarization may be attributed to grain alignment by the anisotropic radiation field. If the grains are radiatively aligned, then our observations indicate that large (~ 100 um) dust grains grow quickly at large angular extents. Finally, we identify significant proper motion of VLA 1623 using our observations and those in the literature. This result indicates that the proper motion of nearby systems must be corrected for when combining ALMA data from different epochs.
We present CARMA 2.9 mm dust continuum emission observations of a sample of 14 Herschel-detected Class 0 protostars in the Orion A and B molecular clouds, drawn from the PACS Bright Red Sources (PBRS) sample (Stutz et al.). These objects are characterized by very red 24 micron to 70 micron colors and prominent submillimeter emission, suggesting that they are very young Class 0 protostars embedded in dense envelopes. We detect all of the PBRS in 2.9 mm continuum emission and emission from 4 protostars and 1 starless core in the fields toward the PBRS; we also report 1 new PBRS source. The ratio of 2.9 mm luminosity to bolometric luminosity is higher by a factor of $sim$5 on average, compared to other well-studied protostars in the Perseus and Ophiuchus clouds. The 2.9 mm visibility amplitudes for 6 of the 14 PBRS are very flat as a function of uv-distance, with more than 50% of the source emission arising from radii $<$ 1500 AU. These flat visibility amplitudes are most consistent with spherically symmetric envelope density profiles with $rho$~$propto$~R$^{-2.5}$. Alternatively, there could be a massive unresolved structure like a disk or a high-density inner envelope departing from a smooth power-law. The large amount of mass on scales $<$ 1500 AU (implying high average central densities) leads us to suggest that that the PBRS with flat visibility amplitude profiles are the youngest PBRS and may be undergoing a brief phase of high mass infall/accretion and are possibly among the youngest Class 0 protostars. The PBRS with more rapidly declining visibility amplitudes still have large envelope masses, but could be slightly more evolved.
We demonstrate the unique capabilities of Herschel to study very young luminous extragalactic young stellar objects (YSOs) by analyzing a central strip of the Large Magellanic Cloud obtained through the HERITAGE Science Demonstration Program. We combine PACS 100 and 160, and SPIRE 250, 350, and 500 microns photometry with 2MASS (1.25-2.17 microns) and Spitzer IRAC and MIPS (3.6-70 microns) to construct complete spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of compact sources. From these, we identify 207 candidate embedded YSOs in the observed region, ~40% never-before identified. We discuss their position in far-infrared color-magnitude space, comparing with previously studied, spectroscopically confirmed YSOs and maser emission. All have red colors indicating massive cool envelopes and great youth. We analyze four example YSOs, determining their physical properties by fitting their SEDs with radiative transfer models. Fitting full SEDs including the Herschel data requires us to increase the size and mass of envelopes included in the models. This implies higher accretion rates (greater than or equal to 0.0001 M_sun/yr), in agreement with previous outflow studies of high-mass protostars. Our results show that Herschel provides reliable longwave SEDs of large samples of high-mass YSOs; discovers the youngest YSOs whose SEDs peak in Herschel bands; and constrains the physical properties and evolutionary stages of YSOs more precisely than was previously possible.