article · Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics
This research presents the Atacama Compact Array 1.3 mm continuum source catalogue from the QUARKS survey, investigating 139 massive star-forming clumps. By processing these observational data alongside multi-wavelength records, the work catalogues 207 continuum sources, examining their temperatures, masses, and densities through radiation transfer and dust emission models. The detected sources are gravity-dominated, massive fragments showing supersonic turbulence and hosting embedded star-forming protoclusters. The study identifies a linear correlation between the masses of fragments and their parent clumps, finding an average dense gas fraction of roughly six percent across a range of one to ten percent. Because this dense gas fraction appears independent of size, it points to a self-similar fragmentation or collapse mode in protocluster formation. Furthermore, the dense gas fraction increases with the luminosity-to-mass ratio, and observed limited fragmentation suggests an active global collapse process.
Understanding how massive stars and protoclusters form is essential for explaining the evolution of galaxies and the interstellar medium. By measuring gas density, temperature, and fragmentation behaviour across early evolutionary stages, these observational catalogues provide fundamental physical benchmarks that help astrophysicists test and refine theoretical models of cosmic structure formation.
The abstract does not indicate an application pathway.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Abstract Leveraging the high resolution, sensitivity, and wide frequency coverage of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the QUARKS survey, standing for “Querying Underlying mechanisms of massive star formation with ALMA-Resolved gas Kinematics and Structures”, is observing 139 massive star-forming clumps at ALMA Band 6 ( λ ∼ 1.3 mm). This paper introduces the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) 7 m data of the QUARKS survey, describing the ACA observations and data reduction. Combining multi-wavelength data, we provide the first edition of QUARKS atlas, offering insights into the multiscale and multiphase interstellar medium in high-mass star formation. The ACA 1.3 mm catalog includes 207 continuum sources that are called ACA sources. Their gas kinetic temperatures are estimated using three formaldehyde transitions with a non-LTE radiation transfer model, and the mass and density are derived from a dust emission model. The ACA sources are massive (16–84 percentile values of 6–160 M ⊙ ), gravity-dominated ( M ∝ R 1.1 ) fragments within massive clumps, with supersonic turbulence ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi class="MJX-tex-calligraphic" mathvariant="script">M</mml:mi> <mml:mo>></mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:math> ) and embedded star-forming protoclusters. We find a linear correlation between the masses of the fragments and the massive clumps, with a ratio of 6% between the two. When considering fragments as representative of dense gas, the ratio indicates a dense gas fraction (DGF) of 6%, although with a wide scatter ranging from 1% to 10%. If we consider the QUARKS massive clumps to be what is observed at various scales, then the size-independent DGF indicates a self-similar fragmentation or collapsing mode in protocluster formation. With the ACA data over four orders of magnitude of luminosity-to-mass ratio ( L / M ), we find that the DGF increases significantly with L / M , which indicates clump evolutionary stage. We observed a limited fragmentation at the subclump scale, which can be explained by a dynamic global collapse process.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1088/1674-4527/ad3dc3
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
