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Fragmentation during the early stages of high-mass star formation is crucial for understanding the formation of high-mass clusters. We investigated fragmentation within 39 high-mass star-forming clumps as part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Survey of 70 μ m Dark High-mass Clumps in Early Stages (ASHES) survey. Considering projection effects, we have estimated core separations for 839 cores identified from the continuum emission and found mean values between 0.08 and 0.32 pc within each clump. We find compatibility of the observed core separations and masses with the thermal Jeans length and mass, respectively. We also present subclump structures revealed by the 7 m array continuum emission. Comparison of the Jeans parameters using clump and subclump densities with the separation and masses of gravitationally bound cores suggests that they can be explained by clump fragmentation, implying the simultaneous formation of subclumps and cores within rather than a step-by-step hierarchical fragmentation. The number of cores in each clump positively correlates with the clump surface density and the number expected from the thermal Jeans fragmentation. We also find that the higher the fraction of protostellar cores, the larger the dynamic range of the core mass, implying that the cores are growing in mass as the clump evolves. The ASHES sample exhibits various fragmentation patterns: aligned, scattered, clustered, and subclustered. Using the Q -parameter, which can help distinguish between centrally condensed and subclustered spatial core distributions, we finally find that in the early evolutionary stages of high-mass star formation, cores tend to follow a subclustered distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the physical and chemical properties of cold and dense molecular clouds is crucial for the understanding of how stars form. Under the typical conditions of infrared dark clouds, CO is removed from the gas phase and trapped onto the surface of dust grains by the so-called depletion process. This suggests that the CO-depletion factor (f D) can be a useful chemical indicator for identifying cold and dense regions (i.e., prestellar cores). We have used the 1.3 mm continuum and C18O (2â€"1) data observed at the resolution of ∼5000 au in the ALMA Survey of 70 ÎĽ m Dark High-mass Clumps in Early Stages (ASHES) to construct averaged maps of f D in 12 clumps to characterize the earliest stages of the high-mass star formation process. The average f D determined for 277 of the 294 ASHES cores follows an unexpected increase from the prestellar to the protostellar stage. If we exclude the temperature effect due to the slight variations in the NH3 kinetic temperature among different cores, we explain this result as a dependence primarily on the average gas density, which increases in cores where protostellar conditions prevail. This shows that f D determined in high-mass star-forming regions at the core scale is insufficient to distinguish among prestellar and protostellar conditions for the individual cores and should be complemented by information provided by additional tracers. However, we confirm that the clump-averaged f D values correlate with the luminosity-to-mass ratio of each source, which is known to trace the evolution of the star formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a mass of ∼1000 M ⊙ and a surface density of ∼0.5 g cmâˆ'2, G023.477+0.114, also known as IRDC 18310-4, is an infrared dark cloud (IRDC) that has the potential to form high-mass stars and has been recognized as a promising prestellar clump candidate. To characterize the early stages of high-mass star formation, we have observed G023.477+0.114 as part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Survey of 70 ÎĽ m Dark High-mass Clumps in Early Stages. We have conducted ∼1.″2 resolution observations with ALMA at 1.3 mm in dust continuum and molecular line emission. We have identified 11 cores, whose masses range from 1.1 to 19.0 M ⊙. Ignoring magnetic fields, the virial parameters of the cores are below unity, implying that the cores are gravitationally bound. However, when magnetic fields are included, the prestellar cores are close to virial equilibrium, while the protostellar cores remain sub-virialized. Star formation activity has already started in this clump. Four collimated outflows are detected in CO and SiO. H2CO and CH3OH emission coincide with the high-velocity components seen in the CO and SiO emission. The outflows are randomly oriented for the natal filament and the magnetic field. The position-velocity diagrams suggest that episodic mass ejection has already begun even in this very early phase of protostellar formation. The masses of the identified cores are comparable to the expected maximum stellar mass that this IRDC could form (8â€"19 M ⊙). We explore two possibilities on how IRDC G023.477+0.114 could eventually form high-mass stars in the context of theoretical scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a spatio-kinematical analysis of the CO (J = 2 → 1) line emission, observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of the outflow associated with the most massive core, ALMA1, in the 70 μm dark clump G010.991–00.082. The position–velocity (PV) diagram of the molecular outflow exhibits a peculiar S-shaped morphology that has not been seen in any other star-forming region. We propose a spatio-kinematical model for the bipolar molecular outflow that consists of a decelerating high-velocity component surrounded by a slower component whose velocity increases with distance from the central source. The physical interpretation of the model is in terms of a jet that decelerates as it entrains material from the ambient medium, which has been predicted by calculations and numerical simulations of molecular outflows in the past. One side of the outflow is shorter and shows a stronger deceleration, suggesting that the medium through which the jet moves is significantly inhomogeneous. The age of the outflow is estimated to be τ ≈ 1300 yr, after correction for a mean inclination of the system of ≈57°. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a study of outflows at extremely early stages of high-mass star formation obtained from the ALMA Survey of 70 μm dark High-mass clumps in Early Stages (ASHES). Twelve massive 3.6−70 μm dark prestellar clump candidates were observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Band 6. Forty-three outflows are identified toward 41 out of 301 dense cores using the CO and SiO emission lines, yielding a detection rate of 14%. We discover six episodic molecular outflows associated with low- to high-mass cores, indicating that episodic outflows (and therefore episodic accretion) begin at extremely early stages of protostellar evolution for a range of core masses. The time span between consecutive ejection events is much smaller than those found in more evolved stages, which indicates that the ejection episodicity timescale is likely not constant over time. The estimated outflow dynamical timescale appears to increase with core masses, which likely indicates that more massive cores have longer accretion timescales than less massive cores. The lower accretion rates in these 70 μm dark objects compared to the more evolved protostars indicate that the accretion rates increase with time. The total outflow energy rate is smaller than the turbulent energy dissipation rate, which suggests that outflow-induced turbulence cannot sustain the internal clump turbulence at the current epoch. We often detect thermal SiO emission within these 70 μm dark clumps that is unrelated to CO outflows. This SiO emission could be produced by collisions, intersection flows, undetected protostars, or other motions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a comprehensive survey of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) in 0.91-1.32 μm with the newly developed near-infrared (NIR) spectrograph WINERED mounted on the Araki 1.3 m telescope in Japan. We obtained high-resolution (R = 28, 300) spectra of 25 early-type stars with color excesses of 0.07 < E(B – V) < 3.4. In addition to the 4 DIBs previously detected in this wavelength range, we identified 15 new DIBs, 7 of which were reported as DIB “candidates” by Cox. We analyze the correlations among NIR DIBs, strong optical DIBs, and the reddening of the stars. Consequently, we found that all NIR DIBs show weaker correlations with the reddening rather than the optical DIBs, suggesting that the equivalent widths of NIR DIBs depend on some physical conditions of the interstellar clouds, such as UV flux. Three NIR DIBs, λλ10780, 10792, and 11797, are found to be classifiable as a “family,” in which the DIBs are well correlated with each other, suggesting that the carriers of these DIBs are connected with some chemical reactions and/or have similar physical properties such as ionization potential. We also found that the three strongest NIR DIBs, λλ10780, 11797, and 13175 are well correlated with the optical DIB λ5780.5, whose carrier is proposed to be a cation molecule with high ionization potential, indicating that the carriers of the NIR DIBs could be cation molecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the discovery of star formation activity in perhaps the most distant molecular cloud in the extreme outer galaxy. We performed deep near-infrared imaging with the Subaru 8.2 m telescope, and found two young embedded clusters at two CO peaks of “Digel Cloud 1” at the kinematic distance of D = 16 kpc (Galactocentric radius RG = 22 kpc). We identified 18 and 45 cluster members in the two peaks, and the estimated stellar densities are ∼5 and ∼3 pc–2, respectively. The observed K-band luminosity function suggests that the age of the clusters is less than 1 Myr and also that the distance to the clusters is consistent with the kinematic distance. On the sky, Cloud 1 is located very close to the H I peak of high-velocity cloud Complex H, and there are some H I intermediate velocity structures between the Complex H and the Galactic disk, which could indicate an interaction between them. We suggest the possibility that Complex H impacting on the Galactic disk has triggered star formation in Cloud 1 as well as the formation of the Cloud 1 molecular cloud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]