ATOMS: ALMA Three-millimeter Observations of Massive Star-forming regions - XI. From inflow to infall in hub-filament systems

Jian-Wen Zhou , Tie Liu , Neal J. Evans , Guido Garay , Paul F. Goldsmith , Gilberto C. Gómez , Enrique Vázquez-Semadeni , Hong-Li Liu , Amelia M. Stutz , Ke Wang , Mika Juvela , Jinhua He , Di Li , Leonardo Bronfman , Xunchuan Liu , Feng-Wei Xu , Anandmayee Tej , L. K. Dewangan , Shanghuo Li , Siju Zhang , Chao Zhang , Zhiyuan Ren , Ken'Ichi Tatematsu , Pak Shing Li , Chang Won Lee , Tapas Baug , Sheng-Li Qin , Yuefang Wu , Yaping Peng , Yong Zhang , Rong Liu , Qiu-Yi Luo , Jixing Ge , Anindya Saha , Eswaraiah Chakali , Qizhou Zhang , Kee-Tae Kim , Isabelle Ristorcelli (1) , Zhi-Qiang Shen , Jin-Zeng Li

1 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie

We investigate the presence of hub-filament systems in a large sample of 146 active proto-clusters, using H¹³CO⁺ J = 1-0 molecular line data obtained from the ATOMS survey. We find that filaments are ubiquitous in proto-clusters, and hub-filament systems are very common from dense core scales (~0.1 pc) to clump/cloud scales (~1-10 pc). The proportion of proto-clusters containing hub-filament systems decreases with increasing dust temperature (T_d) and luminosity-to-mass ratios (L/M) of clumps, indicating that stellar feedback from H II regions gradually destroys the hub-filament systems as proto-clusters evolve. Clear velocity gradients are seen along the longest filaments with a mean velocity gradient of 8.71 km s^-1 pc^-1 and a median velocity gradient of 5.54 km s^-1 pc^-1. We find that velocity gradients are small for filament lengths larger than ~1 pc, probably hinting at the existence of inertial inflows, although we cannot determine whether the latter are driven by large-scale turbulence or large-scale gravitational contraction. In contrast, velocity gradients below ~1 pc dramatically increase as filament lengths decrease, indicating that the gravity of the hubs or cores starts to dominate gas infall at small scales. We suggest that self-similar hub-filament systems and filamentary accretion at all scales may play a key role in high-mass star formation.

Mots clés: ISM: clouds; ISM: H II regions; ISM: kinematics and dynamics; stars: formation; stars: protostars; Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies; Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]

Jian-Wen Zhou, Tie Liu, Neal J. Evans, Guido Garay, Paul F. Goldsmith, et al.. ATOMS: ALMA Three-millimeter Observations of Massive Star-forming regions - XI. From inflow to infall in hub-filament systems. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2022, 514, pp.6038-6052. ⟨10.1093/mnras/stac1735⟩. ⟨insu-03867453⟩