Evidence of high-mass star formation through multiscale mass accretion in hub-filament-system clouds
Hongli Liu, Anandmayee Tej, Tie Liu, Patricio Sanhueza, Sheng‐Li Qin, Jinhua He, P. F. Goldsmith, Guido Garay, Sirong Pan, Kaho Morii, Shanghuo Li, Amelia M. Stutz, Ken’ichi Tatematsu, Fengwei Xu, L. Bronfman, Anindya Saha, Namitha Issac, Tapas Baug, L. Viktor Tóth, L. K. Dewangan, Ke Wang, J. W. Zhou, Chang Won Lee, Dongting Yang, An-Xu Luo, Xianjin Shen, Yong Zhang, Yuefang Wu, Zhiyuan Ren, Xunchuan Liu, Archana Soam, Siju Zhang, Qiuyi Luo
Abstract
ABSTRACT We present a statistical study of a sample of 17 hub-filament-system (HFS) clouds of high-mass star formation using high-angular resolution (∼1–2 arcsec) ALMA 1.3 and 3 mm continuum data. The sample includes eight infrared (IR)-dark and nine IR-bright types, which correspond to an evolutionary sequence from the IR-dark to IR-bright stage. The central massive clumps and their associated most massive cores are observed to follow a trend of increasing mass (M) and mass surface density (Σ) with evolution from the IR-dark to IR-bright stage. In addition, a mass-segregated cluster of young stellar objects (YSOs) are revealed in both IR-dark and IR-bright HFSs with massive YSOs located in the hub and the population of low-mass YSOs distributed over larger areas. Moreover, outflow feedback in all HFSs are found to escape preferentially through the inter-filamentary diffuse cavities, suggesting that outflows would render a limited effect on the disruption of the HFSs and ongoing high-mass star formation therein. From the above observations, we suggest that high-mass star formation in the HFSs can be described by a multiscale mass accretion/transfer scenario, from hub-composing filaments through clumps down to cores, which can naturally lead to a mass-segregated cluster of stars.