Analysis and test of the central-blue-spot infall hallmark

Abstract

The infall of material onto a protostar, in the case of optically thick line emission, produces an asymmetry in the blue- and red-wing line emission. For an angularly resolved emission, this translates in a blue central spot in the first-order moment (intensity weighted velocity) map. An analytical expression for the first-order moment intensity as a function of the projected distance was derived, for the cases of infinite and finite infall radius. The effect of a finite angular resolution, which requires the numerical convolution with the beam, was also studied. This method was applied to existing data of several star-forming regions, namely G31.41+0.31 HMC, B335, and LDN 1287, obtaining good fits to the first-order moment intensity maps, and deriving values of the central masses onto which the infall is taking place (G31.41+0.31 HMC: 70-120 $M_{\odot }$; B335: 0.1 $M_{\odot }$; Guitar Core of LDN 1287: 4.8 $M_{\odot }$). The central-blue-spot infall hallmark appears to be a robust and reliable indicator of infall.

Accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (2)

• A multi-transition molecular line study of candidate massive young stellar objects associated with methanol masers
• HfS, Hyperfine Structure Fitting Tool

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Digging into the Interior of Hot Cores with ALMA (DIHCA). I. Dissecting the High-mass Star-Forming Core G335.579-0.292 MM1
• Digging into the Interior of Hot Cores with ALMA (DIHCA). II. Exploring the Inner Binary (Multiple) System Embedded in G335 MM1 ALMA1
• Identification of Methyl Isocyanate and Other Complex Organic Molecules in a Hot Molecular Core, G31.41+0.31
• VLA ammonia observations of L1287: analysis of the "Guitar" core and two filaments
• Radiative transfer modeling of the observed line profiles in G31.41+0.31