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Register a new userThe reflection-symmetric wiggle of the young protostellar jet HH 211
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HH 211 is a highly collimated jet originating from a nearby young Class 0 protostar. Here is a follow-up study of the jet with our previous observations at unprecedented resolution up to ~ 0.3 in SiO (J=8-7), CO (J=3-2), and SO (N_J=8_9-7_8). SiO, CO, and SO can all be a good tracer of the HH 211 jet, tracing the internal shocks in the jet. Although the emissions of these molecules show roughly the same morphology of the jet, there are detailed differences. In particular, the CO emission traces the jet closer to the source than the SiO and SO emissions. In addition, in the better resolved internal shocks, both the CO and SO emission are seen slightly ahead of the SiO emission. The jet is clearly seen on both sides of the source with more than one cycle of wiggle. The wiggle is reflection-symmetric about the source and can be reasonably fitted by an orbiting source jet model. The best-fit parameters suggest that the source itself could be a very low-mass protobinary with a total mass of ~ 60 M_Jup and a binary separation of ~ 4.6 AU. The abundances of SiO and SO in the gas phase are found to be highly enhanced in the jet as compared to the quiescent molecular clouds, even close to within 300 AU from the source where the dynamical time scale is <10 yrs. The abundance enhancements of these molecules are closely related to the internal shocks. The detected SiO is either the consequence of the release of Si-bearing material from dust grains or of its formation via gas chemistry in the shocks. The SO, on the other hand, seems to form via gas chemistry in the shocks.
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The central problem in forming a star is the angular momentum in the circumstellar disk which prevents material from falling into the central stellar core. An attractive solution to the angular momentum problem appears to be the ubiquitous (low-velocity and poorly-collimated) molecular outflows and (high-velocity and highly-collimated) protostellar jets accompanying the earliest phase of star formation that remove angular momentum at a range of disk radii. Previous observations suggested that outflowing material carries away the excess angular momentum via magneto-centrifugally driven winds from the surfaces of circumstellar disks down to ~ 10 AU scales, allowing the material in the outer disk to transport to the inner disk. Here we show that highly collimated protostellar jets remove the residual angular momenta at the ~ 0.05 AU scale, enabling the material in the innermost region of the disk to accrete toward the central protostar. This is supported by the rotation of the jet measured down to ~ 10 AU from the protostar in the HH 212 protostellar system. The measurement implies a jet launching radius of ~ 0.05_{-0.02}^{+0.05} AU on the disk, based on the magneto-centrifugal theory of jet production, which connects the properties of the jet measured at large distances to those at its base through energy and angular momentum conservation.
HH 211-mms is one of the youngest Class 0 protostellar systems in Perseus at ~ 235 pc away. We have mapped its central region at up to ~ 7 AU (0.03) resolution. A dusty disk is seen deeply embedded in a flattened envelope, with an intensity jump in dust continuum at ~ 350 GHz. It is nearly edge-on and is almost exactly perpendicular to the jet axis. It has a size of ~ 30 au along the major axis. It is geometrically thick, indicating that the (sub)millimeter light emitting grains have yet to settle to the midplane. Its inner part is expected to have transformed into a Keplerian rotating disk with a radius of ~ 10 au. A rotating disk atmosphere and a compact rotating bipolar outflow are detected in SO. The outflow fans out from the inner disk surfaces and is rotating in the same direction as the flattened envelope, and hence could trace a disk wind carrying away angular momentum from the inner disk. From the rotation of the disk atmosphere, the protostellar mass is estimated to be <~ 50 M_Jup. Together with results from the literature, our result favors a model where the disk radius grows linearly with the protostellar mass, as predicted by models of pre-stellar dense core evolution that asymptotes to an $r^{-1}$ radial profile for both the column density and angular velocity.
HH 211 is a nearby young protostellar system with a highly collimated jet. We have mapped it in 352 GHz continuum, SiO (J=8-7), and HCO+ (J=4-3) emission at up to ~ 0.2 resolution with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). The continuum source is now resolved into two sources, SMM1 and SMM2, with a separation of ~ 84 AU. SMM1 is seen at the center of the jet, probably tracing a (inner) dusty disk around the protostar driving the jet. SMM2 is seen to the southwest of SMM1 and may trace an envelope-disk around a small binary companion. A flattened envelope-disk is seen in HCO+ around SMM1 with a radius of ~ 80 AU perpendicular to the jet axis. Its velocity structure is consistent with a rotation motion and can be fitted with a Keplerian law that yields a mass of ~ 50+-15 Jupiter mass (a mass of a brown dwarf) for the protostar. Thus, the protostar could be the lowest mass source known to have a collimated jet and a rotating flattened envelope-disk. A small-scale (~ 200 AU) low-speed (~ 2 km/s) outflow is seen in HCOP+ around the jet axis extending from the envelope-disk. It seems to rotate in the same direction as the envelope-disk and may carry away part of the angular momentum from the envelope-disk. The jet is seen in SiO close to ~ 100 AU from SMM1. It is seen with a C-shaped bending. It has a transverse width of <~ 40 AU and a velocity of ~ 170+-60 km/s. A possible velocity gradient is seen consistently across its innermost pair of knots, with ~ 0.5 km/s at ~ 10 AU, consistent with the sense of rotation of the envelope-disk. If this gradient is an upper limit of the true rotational gradient of the jet, then the jet carries away a very small amount of angular momentum of ~ 5 AU km/s and thus must be launched from the very inner edge of the disk near the corotation radius.
The HH 211 protostellar system is currently the youngest Class 0 system found with a rotating disk. We have mapped it at ~ 50 au (0.16) resolution, studying its magnetic field morphology with dust polarization in continuum at 232 and 358 GHz and its kinematics in C18O J=2-1 line. A flattened envelope extending out to ~ 400 au from the disk is detected in the continuum and C18O, slightly misaligned with the disk by 8 degree. It is spiraling inwards and expected to transform into a rotating disk at ~ 20 au, consistent with the disk radius estimated before. It appears to have a constant specific angular momentum and itself can result from an inside-out collapse of an extended envelope detected before in NH$_3$. In the flattened envelope, the polarization is mainly due to the magnetically aligned dust grains, inferring a highly pinched poloidal field morphology there. Thus, both the kinematics and field morphology support that the flattened envelope is a pseudodisk formed as the infalling gas is guided by the field lines to the equatorial plane. Interestingly, a point symmetric polarization distribution is also seen in the flattened envelope, implying that the pinched field lines also have a significant toroidal component generated by the rotation. No significant loss of angular momentum and thus no clear magnetic braking are detected in the flattened envelope around the disk probably because of the large misalignment between the axis of the rotation and the axis of the magnetic field in the cloud core.
The recently discovered protostellar jet known as HH212 is beautifully symmetric, with a series of paired shock knots and bow shocks on either side of the exciting source region, IRAS 05413-0104 (Zinnecker et al. 1998). We present VLA ammonia maps of the IRAS 05413-0104 molecular gas envelope in which the protostellar jet source is embedded. We find that the envelope, with mass of 0.2 M(sun) detected by the interferometer, is flattened perpendicular to the jet axis with a FWHM diameter of 12000 AU and an axis ratio of 2:1, as seen in NH3 (1,1) emission. There is a velocity gradient of about 4-5 km sec^-1 pc^-1 across the flattened disk-like core, suggestive of rotation around an axis aligned with the jet. Flux-weighted mean velocities increase smoothly with radius with a roughly constant velocity gradient. In young (Class 0) systems such as HH212, a significant amount of material is still distributed in a large surrounding envelope, and thus the observable kinematics of the system may reflect the less centrally condensed, youthful state of the source and obscuration of central dynamics. The angular momentum of this envelope material may be released from infalling gas through rotation in the HH212 jet, as recent observations suggest (Davis et al. 2000). A blue-shifted wisp or bowl of emitting gas appears to be swept up along the blue side of the outflow, possibly lining the cavity of a wider angle wind around the more collimated shock jet axis. Our ammonia (2,2)/(1,1) ratio map indicates that this very cold core is heated to 14 Kelvin degrees in a centrally condensed area surrounding the jet source. This edge-on core and jet system appears to be young and deeply embedded. This environment, however, is apparently not disrupting the pristine symmetry and collimation of the jet.
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