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Hauyu Baobab Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Hauyu Baobab Liu.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Clustered Formation of Massive Stars within an Ionized Rotating Disk

We present ALMA observations with a 800 au resolution and radiative-transfer modelling of the inner part ($r\approx6000$ au) of the ionized accretion flow around a compact star cluster in formation at the center of the luminous ultra-compact (UC) HII region G10.6-0.4. We modeled the flow with an ionized Keplerian disk with and without radial motions in its outer part, or with an external Ulrich envelope. The MCMC fits to the data give total stellar masses $M_\star$ from 120 to $200~M_\odot$, with much smaller ionized-gas masses $M_\mathrm{ion-gas} = 0.2$ to $0.25~M_\odot$. The stellar mass is distributed within the gravitational radius $R_g\approx 1000$ to 1500 au, where the ionized gas is bound. The viewing inclination angle from the face-on orientation is $i = 49$ to $56~°$. Radial motions at radii $r > R_g$ converge to $v_{r,0} \approx 8.7$ km/s, or about the speed of sound of ionized gas, indicating that this gas is marginally unbound at most. From additional constraints on the ionizing-photon rate and far-IR luminosity of the region, we conclude that the stellar cluster consists of a few massive stars with $M_\mathrm{star} = 32$ to $60~M_\odot$, or one star in this range of masses accompanied by a population of lower-mass stars. Any active accretion of ionized gas onto the massive (proto)stars is residual. The inferred cluster density is very large, comparable to that reported at similar scales in the Galactic Center. Stellar interactions are likely to occur within the next Myr.

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Grain Growth in the Dust Ring with Crescent around Very Low Mass Star ZZ Tau IRS with JVLA

The azimuthal asymmetries of dust rings in protoplanetary disks such as a crescent around young stars are often interpreted as dust traps, and thus as ideal locations for planetesimal and planet formations. Whether such dust traps effectively promote planetesimal formation in disks around very-low-mass stars (VLM; a mass of $\lesssim$0.2~$M_\odot$) is debatable, as the dynamical and grain growth timescales in such systems are long. To investigate grain growth in such systems, we studied the dust ring with crescent around the VLM star ZZ~Tau~IRS using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) at centimeter wavelengths. Significant signals were detected around ZZ~Tau~IRS. To estimate the maximum grain size ($a_{\rm max}$) in the crescent, we compared the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) with SEDs for various $a_{\rm max}$ values predicted by radiative transfer calculations. We found $a_{\rm max} \gtrsim$~1~mm and $\lesssim$~60~$μ$m in the crescent and ring, respectively, though our modeling efforts rely on uncertain dust properties. Our results suggest that grain growth occurred in the ZZ~Tau~IRS disk, relative to sub-micron-sized interstellar medium. Planet formation in crescent with mm-sized pebbles might proceed more efficiently than in other regions with sub-millimeter-sized pebbles via pebble accretion scenarios.

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Gap Opening and Inner Disk Structure in the Strongly Accreting Transition Disk of DM Tau

Large inner dust gaps in transition disks are frequently posited as evidence of giant planets sculpting gas and dust in the disk, or the opening of a gap by photoevaporative winds. Although the former hypothesis is strongly supported by the observations of planets and deep depletions in gas within the gap some disks, many T Tauri stars hosting transition disks accrete at rates typical for an undepleted disk, raising the question of how gap opening occurs in these objects. We thus present an analysis of the structure of the transition disk around the T Tauri star DM Tau, which is strongly accreting ($\sim 10^{-8.3}~\mathrm{M}_\odot~ \mathrm{yr}^{-1}$) and turbulent ($α=0.078 \pm 0.02$). Using the DALI thermochemical code, we fit disk models to simultaneously reproduce the accretion rate, high level of turbulence, the gas traced by ALMA band 6 observations of $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, and C$^{18}$O J=2--1 lines, and the observed dust emission from the mm continuum and spectral energy distribution. We find a shallow depletion in gas surface density of $\sim 10$ relative to the outer disk and a gas rich inner disk is consistent with the observations. The planet mass of $<1$ M$_\mathrm{Jup}$ implied by the gap depth is in tension with predictions for dust trapping in a highly viscous disk, which requires a more massive planet of of $\sim10$M$_\mathrm{Jup}$. Photoevaporative models including a dead zone can qualitatively reproduce some features of the DM Tau disk, but still struggle to explain the high accretion rates and the observed mm continuum flux.

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Tracking the ice mantle history in the Solar-type Protostars of NGC 1333 IRAS 4

To understand the origin of the diversity observed in exoplanetary systems, it is crucial to characterize the early stages of their formation, represented by Solar-type protostars. Likely, the gaseous chemical content of these objects directly depends on the composition of the dust grain mantles formed before the collapse. Directly retrieving the ice mantle composition is challenging, but it can be done indirectly by observing the major components, such as NH3 and CH3OH at cm wavelengths, once they are released into the gas-phase during the warm protostellar stage. We observed several CH3OH and NH3 lines toward three Class 0 protostars in NGC1333 (IRAS 4A1, IRAS 4A2, and IRAS 4B), at high angular resolution (1"; ~300 au) with the VLA interferometer at 24-26 GHz. Using a non-LTE LVG analysis, we derived a similar NH3/CH3OH abundance ratio in the three protostars (<0.5, 0.015-0.5, and 0.003-0.3 for IRAS 4A1, 4A2, and 4B, respectively). Hence, we infer they were born from pre-collapse material with similar physical conditions. Comparing the observed abundance ratios with astrochemical model predictions, we constrained the dust temperature at the time of the mantle formation to be ~17 K, which coincides with the average temperature of the southern NGC 1333 diffuse cloud. We suggest that a brutal event started the collapse that eventually formed IRAS 4A1, 4A2 and 4B, which,therefore, did not experience the usual pre-stellar core phase. This event could be the clash of a bubble with NGC 1333 south, that has previously been evoked in the literature.

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Formation of dust clumps with sub-Jupiter mass and cold shadowed region in gravitationally unstable disk around Class 0/I protostar in L1527 IRS

We have investigated the protostellar disk around a Class 0/I protostar, L1527 IRS, using multi-wavelength observations of the dust continuum emission at $λ=0.87$, 2.1, 3.3, and 6.8 mm obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Our observations achieved a spatial resolution of $3-13$ au and revealed an edge-on disk structure with a size of $\sim80-100$ au. The emission at 0.87 and 2.1 mm is found to be optically thick within a projected disk radius of $ r_{\rm proj}\lesssim50$ au. The emission at 3.3 and 6.8 mm shows that the power-law index of the dust opacity ($β$) is $β\sim1.7$ around $ r_{\rm proj}\sim 50$ au, suggesting that grain growth has not yet begun. The dust temperature ($T_{\rm dust}$) shows a steep decrease with $T_{\rm dust}\propto r_{\rm proj}^{-2}$ outside of the VLA clumps previously identified at $r_{\rm proj}\sim20$ au. Furthermore, the disk is gravitationally unstable at $r_{\rm proj}\sim20$ au, as indicated by a Toomre {\it Q} parameter value of $Q\lesssim1.0$. These results suggest that the VLA clumps are formed via gravitational instability, which creates a shadow on the outside of the substructure, resulting in the sudden drop in temperature. The derived dust masses for the VLA clumps are $\gtrsim0.1$ $M_{\rm J}$. Thus, we suggest that Class 0/I disks can be massive enough to be gravitationally unstable, which might be the origin of gas-giant planets in a 20 au radius. Furthermore, the protostellar disks can be cold due to shadowing.

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A likely flyby of binary protostar Z CMa caught in action

Close encounters between young stellar objects in star forming clusters are expected to dramatically perturb circumstellar disks. Such events are witnessed in numerical simulations of star formation, but few direct observations of ongoing encounters have been made. Here we report sub-0".1 resolution Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) observations towards the million year old binary protostar Z CMa in dust continuum and molecular line emission. A point source ~4700 au from the binary has been discovered at both millimeter and centimeter wavelengths. It is located along the extension of a ~2000 au streamer structure previously found in scattered light imaging, whose counterpart in dust and gas emission is also newly identified. Comparison with simulations shows signposts of a rare flyby event in action. Z CMa is a "double burster", as both binary components undergo accretion outbursts, which may be facilitated by perturbations to the host disk by flybys.

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Evolution of dust in protoplanetary disks of eruptive stars

Luminosity bursts in young FU Orionis-type stars warm up the surrounding disks of gas and dust, thus inflicting changes on their morphological and chemical composition. In this work, we aim at studying the effects that such bursts may have on the spatial distribution of dust grain sizes and the corresponding spectral index in protoplanetary disks. We use the numerical hydrodynamics code FEOSAD, which simulates the co-evolution of gas, dust, and volatiles in a protoplanetary disk, taking dust growth and back reaction on gas into account. The dependence of the maximum dust size on the water ice mantles is explicitly considered. The burst is initialized by increasing the luminosity of the central star to 100-300 L_sun for a time period of 100 yr. The water snowline shifts during the burst to a larger distance, resulting in the drop of the maximum dust size interior to the snowline position because of more efficient fragmentation of bare grains. After the burst, the water snowline shifts quickly back to its preburst location followed by renewed dust growth. The timescale of dust regrowth after the burst depends on the radial distance so that the dust grains at smaller distances reach the preburst values faster than the dust grains at larger distances. As a result, a broad peak in the radial distribution of the spectral index in the millimeter dust emission develops at \approx 10 au, which shifts further out as the disk evolves and dust grains regrow to preburst values at progressively larger distances. This feature is most pronounced in evolved axisymmetric disks rather than in young gravitationally unstable counterparts, although young disks may still be good candidates if gravitational instability is suppressed. Abridged.

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The evolution of temperature and density structures of OB cluster-forming molecular clumps

OB star clusters originate from parsec-scale massive molecular clumps. We aim to understand the evolution of temperature and density structures on the intermediate-scale ($\lesssim$0.1-1 pc) extended gas of massive clumps. We performed $\sim$0.1 pc resolution observations (SMA+APEX) of multiple molecular line tracers (e.g., CH$_{3}$CCH, H$_{2}$CS, CH$_{3}$CN, CH$_{3}$OH) which cover a wide range of excitation conditions, towards a sample of eight massive clumps. Based on various radiative transfer models, we constrain the gas temperature and density structures and establish an evolutionary picture, aided by a spatially-dependent virial analysis and abundance ratios of multiple species. We determine temperature radial profiles varying between 30-200 K over a continuous scale, from the center of the clumps out to 0.3-0.4 pc radii. The clumps' radial gas density profiles, described by radial power-laws with slopes between -0.6 and $\sim$-1.5, are steeper for more evolved sources, as suggested by results based on both dust continuum, representing the bulk of the gas ($\sim$10$^{4}$ cm$^{-3}$), and CH$_{3}$OH lines probing the dense gas ($\gtrsim$10$^{6}$-10$^{8}$ cm$^{-3}$) regime. The density contrast between the dense gas and the bulk gas increases with evolution, and may be indicative of spatially and temporally varying star formation efficiencies. The radial profiles of the virial parameter show a global variation towards a sub-virial state as the clump evolves. The line-widths decline with increasing radius around the central core region and increase in the outer envelope, with a slope shallower than the case of the supersonic turbulence ($\,\propto\,$$r^{0.5}$) and the subsonic Kolmogorov scaling ($\,\propto\,$$r^{0.33}$). In the context of clump evolution, we also find that the abundance ratios of [CCH]/[CH$_{3}$OH] and [CH$_{3}$CN]/[CH$_{3}$OH] show correlations with clump $L/M$.

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ALMA observations of NGC 6334S. II. Subsonic and Transonic Narrow Filaments in a High-mass Star Formation Cloud

We present a study of narrow filaments toward a massive infrared dark cloud, NGC 6334S, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Thirteen gas filaments are identified using the H$^{13}$CO$^{+}$ line, while a single continuum filament is revealed by the continuum emission. The filaments present a compact radial distribution with a median filament width of $\sim$0.04 pc narrower than the previously proposed `quasi-universal' 0.1~pc filament width. The higher spatial resolution observations and higher-density gas tracer tend to identify even narrower and lower mass filaments. The filament widths are roughly twice the size of embedded cores. The gas filaments are largely supported by thermal motions. The nonthermal motions are predominantly subsonic and transonic in both identified gas filaments and embedded cores, which may imply that stars are likely born in environments of low turbulence. A fraction of embedded objects show a narrower velocity dispersion compared with their corresponding natal filaments, which may indicate that the turbulent dissipation is taking place in these embedded cores. The physical properties (mass, mass per unit length, gas kinematics, and width) of gas filaments are analogous to those of narrow filaments found in low- to high-mass star-forming regions. The more evolved sources are found to be farther away from the filaments, a situation that may have resulted from the relative motions between the YSOs and their natal filaments.

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Millimeter-sized Dust Grains Appear Surviving the Water-sublimating Temperature in the Inner 10 au of the FU Ori Disk

Previous observations have shown that the $\lesssim$10 au, $\gtrsim$400 K hot inner disk of the archetypal accretion outburst young stellar object, FU Ori, is dominated by viscous heating. To constrain dust properties in this region, we have performed radio observations toward this disk using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) in 2020 June-July, September, and November. We also performed complementary optical photometric monitoring observations. We found that the dust thermal emission from the hot inner disk mid-plane of FU Ori has been approximately stationary and the maximum dust grain size is $\gtrsim$1.6 mm in this region. If the hot inner disk of FU Ori which is inward of the 150-170 K water snowline is turbulent (e.g., corresponding to a Sunyaev & Shakura viscous $α_{t}\gtrsim$0.1), or if the actual maximum grain size is still larger than the lower limit we presently constrain, then as suggested by the recent analytical calculations and the laboratory measurements, water-ice free dust grains may be stickier than water-ice coated dust grains in protoplanetary disks. Additionally, we find that the free-free emission and the Johnson B and V bands magnitudes of these binary stars are brightening in 2016-2020. The optical and radio variability might be related to the dynamically evolving protostellar or disk accretion activities. Our results highlight that hot inner disks of outbursting objects are important laboratories for testing models of dust grain growth. Given the active nature of such systems, to robustly diagnose the maximum dust grain sizes, it is important to carry out coordinated multi-wavelength radio observations.

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Magnetic fields in the early stages of massive star formation as revealed by ALMA

We present 1.3 mm ALMA dust polarization observations at a resolution of $\sim$0.02 pc of three massive molecular clumps, MM1, MM4, and MM9, in the infrared dark cloud G28.34+0.06. With the sensitive and high-resolution continuum data, MM1 is resolved into a cluster of condensations. The magnetic field structure in each clump is revealed by the polarized emission. We found a trend of decreasing polarized emission fraction with increasing Stokes $I$ intensities in MM1 and MM4. Using the angular dispersion function method (a modified Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method), the plane-of-sky magnetic field strength in two massive dense cores, MM1-Core1 and MM4-Core4, are estimated to be $\sim$1.6 mG and $\sim$0.32 mG, respectively. \textbf{The ordered magnetic energy is found to be smaller than the turbulent energy in the two cores, while the total magnetic energy is found to be comparable to the turbulent energy.} The total virial parameters in MM1-Core1 and MM4-Core4 are calculated to be $\sim$0.76 and $\sim$0.37, respectively, suggesting that massive star formation does not start in equilibrium. Using the polarization-intensity gradient-local gravity method, we found that the local gravity is closely aligned with intensity gradient in the three clumps, and the magnetic field tends to be aligned with the local gravity in MM1 and MM4 except for regions near the emission peak, which suggests that the gravity plays a dominant role in regulating the gas collapse. Half of the outflows in MM4 and MM9 are found to be aligned within 10$^{\circ}$ of the condensation-scale ($<$0.05 pc) magnetic field, indicating that the magnetic field could play an important role from condensation to disk scale in the early stage of massive star formation. We also found that the fragmentation in MM1-Core1 cannot be solely explained by thermal Jeans fragmentation or turbulent Jeans fragmentation.

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The young protostellar disk in IRAS16293-2422 B is hot and shows signatures of gravitational instability

Deeply embedded protostars are actively fed from their surrounding envelopes through their protostellar disk. The physical structure of such early disks might be different from that of more evolved sources due to the active accretion. We present 1.3 and 3\,mm ALMA continuum observations at resolutions of 6.5\,au and 12\,au respectively, towards the Class 0 source IRAS 16293-2422 B. The resolved brightness temperatures appear remarkably high, with $T_{\rm b} >$ 100\,K within $\sim$30\,au and $T_{\rm b}$ peak over 400\,K at 3\,mm. Both wavelengths show a lopsided emission with a spectral index reaching values less than 2 in the central $\sim$ 20\,au region. We compare these observations with a series of radiative transfer calculations and synthetic observations of magnetohydrodynamic and radiation hydrodynamic protostellar disk models formed after the collapse of a dense core. Based on our results, we argue that the gas kinematics within the disk may play a more significant role in heating the disk than the protostellar radiation. In particular, our radiation hydrodynamic simulation of disk formation, including heating sources associated with gravitational instabilities, is able to generate the temperatures necessary to explain the high fluxes observed in IRAS 16293B. Besides, the low spectral index values are naturally reproduced by the high optical depth and high inner temperatures of the protostellar disk models. The high temperatures in IRAS 16293B imply that volatile species are mostly in the gas phase, suggesting that a self-gravitating disk could be at the origin of a hot corino.

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A Core Mass Function Indistinguishable from the Salpeter Stellar Initial Mass Function Using 1000 au Resolution ALMA Observations

We present the core mass function (CMF) of the massive star-forming clump G33.92+0.11 using 1.3 mm observations obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). With a resolution of 1000 au, this is one of the highest resolution CMF measurements to date. The CMF is corrected by flux and number incompleteness to obtain a sample that is complete for gas masses $M\gtrsim2.0\ M_\odot$. The resulting CMF is well represented by a power-law function ($dN/d\log M\propto M^Γ$), whose slope is determined using two different approaches: $i)$ by least-squares fitting of power-law functions to the flux- and number-corrected CMF, and $ii)$ by comparing the observed CMF to simulated samples with similar incompleteness. We provide a prescription to quantify and correct a flattening bias affecting the slope fits in the first approach, which is caused by small-sample or edge effects when the data is represented by either classical histograms or a kernel density estimate, respectively. The resulting slopes from both approaches are in good agreement each other, with $Γ=-1.11_{-0.11}^{+0.12}$ being our adopted value. Although this slope appears to be slightly flatter than the Salpeter slope $Γ=-1.35$ for the stellar initial mass function (IMF), we find from Monte Carlo simulations that the CMF in G33.92+0.11 is statistically indistinguishable from the Salpeter representation of the stellar IMF. Our results are consistent with the idea that the form of the IMF is inherited from the CMF, at least at high masses and when the latter is observed at high-enough resolution.

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A Low-mass Cold and Quiescent Core Population in a Massive Star Protocluster

Pre-stellar cores represent the initial conditions of star formation. Although these initial conditions in nearby low-mass star-forming regions have been investigated in detail, such initial conditions remain vastly unexplored for massive star-forming regions. We report the detection of a cluster of low-mass starless and pre-stellar core candidates in a massive star protocluster forming cloud, NGC6334S. With the ALMA observations at a $\sim$0.02 pc spatial resolution, we identified 17 low-mass starless core candidates that do not show any evidence of protostellar activity. These candidates present small velocity dispersions, high fractional abundances of NH$_{2}$D, high NH$_{3}$ deuterium fractionations, and are completely dark in the infrared wavelengths from 3.6 up to 70~$μ$m. Turbulence is significantly dissipated and the gas kinematics are dominated by thermal motions toward these candidates. Nine out of the 17 cores are gravitationally bound, and therefore are identified as pre-stellar core candidates. The embedded cores of NGC6334S show a wide diversity in masses and evolutionary stages.

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Does the magnetic field suppress fragmentation in massive dense cores?

Theoretical and numerical works indicate that a strong magnetic field should suppress fragmentation in dense cores. However, this has never been tested observationally in a relatively large sample of fragmenting massive dense cores. Here we use the polarization data obtained in the Submillimeter Array Legacy Survey of Zhang et al. to build a sample of 18 massive dense cores where both fragmentation and magnetic field properties are studied in a uniform way. We measured the fragmentation level, Nmm, within the field of view common to all regions, of 0.15 pc, with a mass sensitivity of about 0.5 Msun, and a spatial resolution of about 1000 au. In order to obtain the magnetic field strength using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, we estimated the dispersion of the polarization position angles, the velocity dispersion of the H13CO+(4-3) gas, and the density of each core, all averaged within 0.15 pc. A strong correlation is found between Nmm and the average density of the parental core, although with significant scatter. When large-scale systematic motions are separated from the velocity dispersion and only the small-scale (turbulent) contribution is taken into account, a tentative correlation is found between Nmm and the mass-to-flux ratio, as suggested by numerical and theoretical works.

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ALMA observation of the protoplanetary disk around WW Cha: faint double-peaked ring and asymmetric structure

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Band 6 observations of dust continuum emission of the disk around WW Cha. The dust continuum image shows a smooth disk structure with a faint (low-contrast) dust ring, extending from $\sim 40$ au to $\sim 70$ au, not accompanied by any gap. We constructed the simple model to fit the visibility of the observed data by using MCMC method and found that the bump (we call the ring without the gap the bump) has two peaks at $40$ au and $70$ au. The residual map between the model and observation indicates asymmetric structures at the center and the outer region of the disk. These asymmetric structures are also confirmed by model-independent analysis of the imaginary part of the visibility. The asymmetric structure at the outer region is consistent with a spiral observed by SPHERE. To constrain physical quantities of the disk (dust density and temperature), we carried out radiative transfer simulations. We found that the midplane temperature around the outer peak is close to the freezeout temperature of CO on water ice ($\sim 30$ K). The temperature around the inner peak is about $50$ K, which is close to the freezeout temperature of H$_2$S and also close to the sintering temperature of several species. We also discuss the size distribution of the dust grains using the spectral index map obtained within the Band 6 data.

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ALMA Observations of the Asymmetric Dust Disk around DM Tau

We report an analysis of the dust disk around DM~Tau, newly observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at 1.3 mm. The ALMA observations with high sensitivity (8.4~$μ$Jy/beam) and high angular resolution (35~mas, 5.1~au) detect two asymmetries on the ring at $r\sim$20~au. They could be two vortices in early evolution, the destruction of a large scale vortex, or double continuum emission peaks with different dust sizes. We also found millimeter emissions with $\sim$50~$μ$Jy (a lower limit dust mass of 0.3~$M_{\rm Moon}$) inside the 3-au ring. To characterize these emissions, we modeled the spectral energy distribution (SED) of DM~Tau using a Monte Carlo radiative transfer code. We found that an additional ring at $r=$ 1~au could explain both the DM~Tau SED and the central point source. The disk midplane temperature at the 1-au ring calculated in our modeling is less than the typical water sublimation temperature of 150~K, prompting the possibility of forming small icy planets there.

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Sub-arcsecond Imaging of the Complex Organic Chemistry in Massive Star-forming Region G10.6-0.4

Massive star-forming regions exhibit an extremely rich and diverse chemistry, which in principle provides a wealth of molecular probes, as well as laboratories for interstellar prebiotic chemistry. Since the chemical structure of these sources displays substantial spatial variation among species on small scales (${\lesssim}10^4$ au), high angular resolution observations are needed to connect chemical structures to local environments and inform astrochemical models of massive star formation. To address this, we present ALMA 1.3 mm observations toward OB cluster-forming region G10.6-0.4 (hereafter "G10.6") at a resolution of 0.14$^{\prime\prime}$ (700 au). We find highly-structured emission from complex organic molecules (COMs) throughout the central 20,000 au, including two hot molecular cores and several shells or filaments. We present spatially-resolved rotational temperature and column density maps for a large sample of COMs and warm gas tracers. These maps reveal a range of gas substructure in both O- and N-bearing species. We identify several spatial correlations that can be explained by existing models of COM formation, including NH$_2$CHO/HNCO and CH$_3$OCHO/CH$_3$OCH$_3$, but also observe unexpected distributions and correlations which suggest that our current understanding of COM formation is far from complete. Importantly, complex chemistry is observed throughout G10.6, rather than being confined to hot cores. The COM composition appears to be different in the cores compared to the more extended structures, which illustrates the importance of high spatial resolution observations of molecular gas in elucidating the physical and chemical processes associated with massive star formation.

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