Alignment Between Protostellar Outflows and Filamentary Structure

Abstract

We present new Submillimeter Array (SMA) observations of CO(2-1) outflows toward young, embedded protostars in the Perseus molecular cloud as part of the Mass Assembly of Stellar Systems and their Evolution with the SMA (MASSES) survey. For 57 Perseus protostars, we characterize the orientation of the outflow angles and compare them with the orientation of the local filaments as derived from $Herschel$ observations. We find that the relative angles between outflows and filaments are inconsistent with purely parallel or purely perpendicular distributions. Instead, the observed distribution of outflow-filament angles are more consistent with either randomly aligned angles or a mix of projected parallel and perpendicular angles. A mix of parallel and perpendicular angles requires perpendicular alignment to be more common by a factor of $\sim$3. Our results show that the observed distributions probably hold regardless of the protostar's multiplicity, age, or the host core's opacity. These observations indicate that the angular momentum axis of a protostar may be independent of the large-scale structure. We discuss the significance of independent protostellar rotation axes in the general picture of filament-based star formation.

Accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Interferometric observations of magnetic fields in forming stars
• Widespread Molecular Outflows in the Infrared Dark Cloud G28.37+0.07: Indications of Orthogonal Outflow-Filament Alignment
• Origin of Misalignments: Protostellar Jet, Outflow, Circumstellar Disc, and Magnetic Field
• The Mass Evolution of Protostellar Disks and Envelopes in the Perseus Molecular Cloud
• The Origins of Protostellar Core Angular Momenta
• Revealing the dust grain size in the inner envelope of the Class I protostar Per-emb-50
• Long-term optical monitoring of the solar atmosphere in Italy