Probing Episodic Accretion in Very Low Luminosity Objects

Abstract

Episodic accretion has been proposed as a solution to the long-standing luminosity problem in star formation; however, the process remains poorly understood. We present observations of line emission from N2H+ and CO isotopologues using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the envelopes of eight Very Low Luminosity Objects (VeLLOs). In five of the sources the spatial distribution of emission from N2H+ and CO isotopologues shows a clear anti-correlation. It is proposed that this is tracing the CO snow line in the envelopes: N2H+ emission is depleted toward the center of these sources in contrast to the CO isotopologue emission which exhibits a peak. The positions of the CO snow lines traced by the N2H+ emission are located at much larger radii than those calculated using the current luminosities of the central sources. This implies that these five sources have experienced a recent accretion burst because the CO snow line would have been pushed outwards during the burst due to the increased luminosity of the central star. The N2H+ and CO isotopologue emission from DCE161, one of the other three sources, is most likely tracing a transition disk at a later evolutionary stage. Excluding DCE161, five out of seven sources (i.e., ~70%) show signatures of a recent accretion burst. This fraction is larger than that of the Class 0/I sources studied by Jørgensen et al. (2015) and Frimann et al. (2016) suggesting that the interval between accretion episodes in VeLLOs is shorter than that in Class 0/I sources.

arXiv comment29 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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