arXiv subjects

Koichiro Sugiyama

Publications and source records attributed to Koichiro Sugiyama.

35 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

The Galactic Center Lobe Filled with Thermal Plasma

An observational result of a radio continuum and H92$α$ radio recombination line of the Galactic Center Lobe (GCL), using the Yamaguchi 32 m radio telescope, is reported. The obtained spatial intensity distribution of the radio recombination line shows two distinctive ridge-like structures extending from the galactic plane vertically to the north at the eastern and western sides of the galactic center, which are connected to each other at a latitude of $1.2^{\circ}$ to form a loop-like structure as a whole. This suggests that most of the radio continuum emission of the GCL is free-free emission, and that the GCL is filled with thermal plasma. The east ridge of the GCL observed with the radio recombination line separates 30 pc from the radio arc, which has been considered as a part of the GCL, but coincides with a ridge of the radio continuum at a galactic longitude of $0^{\circ}$. The radial velocity of the radio recombination line is found to be between $-4$ and $+10$ km s$^{-1}$ across the GCL. This velocity is much smaller than the one expected from the galactic rotation, and hence indicates that the GCL exists apart from the galactic center. These characteristics of the GCL suggest that the long-standing hypothesis that the GCL was created by an explosive activity in the galactic center is unlikely, but favor that the GCL is a giant HII region.

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arXiv2017

A Face-on Accretion System in High-Mass Star-Formation: Possible Dusty Infall Streams within 100 AU

We report on interferometric observations of a face-on accretion system around the High-Mass young stellar object, G353.273+0.641. The innermost accretion system of 100 au radius was resolved in a 45 GHz continuum image taken with the Jansky-Very Large Array. Our spectral energy distribution analysis indicated that the continuum could be explained by optically thick dust emission. The total mass of the dusty system is $\sim$ 0.2 $M_{\sun}$ at minimum and up to a few $M_{\sun}$ depending on the dust parameters. 6.7 GHz CH$_{3}$OH masers associated with the same system were also observed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The masers showed a spiral-like, non-axisymmetric distribution with a systematic velocity gradient. The line-of-sight velocity field is explained by an infall motion along a parabolic streamline that falls onto the equatorial plane of the face-on system. The streamline is quasi-radial and reaches the equatorial plane at a radius of 16 au. This is clearly smaller than that of typical accretion disks in High-Mass star formation, indicating that the initial angular momentum was very small, or the CH$_{3}$OH masers selectively trace accreting material that has small angular momentum. In the former case, the initial specific angular momentum is estimated to be 8 $\times$ 10$^{20}$ ($M_{*}$$/$10 $M_{\sun}$)$^{0.5}$ cm$^{2}$ s$^{-1}$, or a significant fraction of the initial angular momentum was removed outside of 100 au. The physical origin of such a streamline is still an open question and will be constrained by the higher-resolution ($\sim$ 10 mas) thermal continuum and line observations with ALMA long baselines.

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arXiv2017

Development of the Phase-up Technology of the Radio Telescopes: 6.7 GHz Methanol Maser Observations with Phased Hitachi 32 m and Takahagi 32 m Radio Telescopes

For the sake of high-sensitivity 6.7 GHz methanol maser observations, we developed a new technology for coherently combining the two signals from the Hitachi 32 m radio telescope and the Takahagi 32 m radio telescope of the Japanese Very long baseline interferometer Network (JVN), where the two telescopes were separated by about 260 m. After the two telescopes were phased as a twofold larger single telescope, the mean signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the 6.7 GHz methanol masers observed by the phased telescopes was improved to 1.254-fold higher than that of the single dish, through a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) experiment on the 50 km baseline of the Kashima 34 m telescope and the 1000 km baseline of the Yamaguchi 32 m telescope. Furthermore, we compared the SNRs of the 6.7 GHz maser spectra for two methods. One is a VLBI method and the other is the newly developed digital position switching, which is a similar technology to that used in noise-cancelling headphones. Finally, we confirmed that the mean SNR of method of the digital position switching (ON-OFF) was 1.597-fold higher than that of the VLBI method.

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arXiv2017

The shortest periodic and flaring flux variability of a methanol maser emission at 6.7 GHz in G 014.23-00.50

We detected flaring flux variability that regularly occurred with the period of 23.9 days on a 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission at Vlsr = 25.30 km/s in G 014.23-00.50 through highly frequent monitoring using the Hitachi 32-m radio telescope. By analyzing data from 05 January 2013 to 21 January 2016, the periodic variability has persisted in at least 47 cycles, corresponding to approximately 1,100 days. The period of 23.9 days is the shortest one observed in masers at around high-mass young stellar objects so far. The flaring component normally falls below the detection limit (3 sigma) of 0.9 Jy. In the flaring periods, the component rises above the detection limit with the ratio of the peak flux density more than 180 in comparison with a quiescent phase, showing intermittent periodic variability. The time-scale of the flux rise was typically two days or shorter, and both symmetric and asymmetric profiles of flux variability were observed through intraday monitoring. These characteristics might be explained by a change in the flux of seed photons by a colliding-wind binary (CWB) system or a variation of the dust temperature by an extra heating source of a shock formed by the CWB system within a gap region in a circumbinary disk, in which the orbital semi-major axes of the binary are 0.26-0.34 au.

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arXiv2015

Accelerating a water maser face-on jet from a high mass young stellar object

We report on a long-term single-dish and VLBI monitoring for intermittent flare activities of a Dominant Blue-Shifted H$_{2}$O Maser (DBSM) associated with a southern high mass young stellar object, G353.273+0.641. Bi-weekly single-dish monitoring using Hokkaido University Tomakomai 11-m radio telescope has shown that a systematic acceleration continues over four years beyond a lifetime of individual maser features. This fact suggests that the H$_{2}$O maser traces a region where molecular gas is steadily accelerated. There were five maser flares during five-years monitoring, and maser distributions in four of them were densely monitored by the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA). The overall distribution of the maser features suggests the presence of a bipolar jet, with the 3D kinematics indicating that it is almost face-on (inclination angle of $\sim$ 8$^{\fdg}$--17$^{\fdg}$ from the line-of-sight). Most of maser features were recurrently excited within a region of 100$\times$100 AU$^{2}$ around the radio continuum peak, while their spatial distributions significantly varied between each flare. This confirms that episodic propagations of outflow shocks recurrently invoke intermittent flare activities. We also measured annual parallax, deriving the source distance of 1.70 $^{+0.19}_{-0.16}$ kpc that is consistent with the commonly-used photometric distance.

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arXiv2014

Observations of the Bursting Activity of the 6.7GHz Methanol Maser in G33.641-0.228

We have observed bursting variability of the 6.7 GHz methanol maser of G33.641-0.228. Five bursts were detected in the observation period of 294 days from 2009 to 2012. The typical burst is a large flux density rise in about one day followed by a slow fall. A non-typical burst observed in 2010 showed a large and rapid flux density enhancement from the stable state, but the rise and fall of the flux density were temporally symmetric and a fast fluctuation continued 12 days. On average, the bursts occurred once every 59 days, although bursting was not periodic. Since the average power required for causing the burst of order of 10^21 Js^-1 is far smaller than the luminosity of G33.641-0.228, a very small fraction of the source's power would be sufficient to cause the burst occasionally. The burst can be explained as a solar-flare like event in which the energy is accumulated in the magnetic field of the circumstellar disk, and is released for a short time. However, the mechanism of the energy release and the dust heating process are still unknown.

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arXiv2014

The First Very Long Baseline Interferometry Image of 44 GHz Methanol Maser with the KVN and VERA Array (KaVA)

We have carried out the first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) imaging of 44 GHz class I methanol maser (7_{0}-6_{1}A^{+}) associated with a millimeter core MM2 in a massive star-forming region IRAS 18151-1208 with KaVA (KVN and VERA Array), which is a newly combined array of KVN (Korean VLBI Network) and VERA (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry). We have succeeded in imaging compact maser features with a synthesized beam size of 2.7 milliarcseconds x 1.5 milliarcseconds (mas). These features are detected at a limited number of baselines within the length of shorter than approximately 650 km corresponding to 100 Mlambda in the uv-coverage. The central velocity and the velocity width of the 44 GHz methanol maser are consistent with those of the quiescent gas rather than the outflow traced by the SiO thermal line. The minimum component size among the maser features is ~ 5 mas x 2 mas, which corresponds to the linear size of ~ 15 AU x 6 AU assuming a distance of 3 kpc. The brightness temperatures of these features range from ~ 3.5 x 10^{8} to 1.0 x 10^{10} K, which are higher than estimated lower limit from a previous Very Large Array observation with the highest spatial resolution of ~ 50 mas. The 44 GHz class I methanol maser in IRAS 18151-1208 is found to be associated with the MM2 core, which is thought to be less evolved than another millimeter core MM1 associated with the 6.7 GHz class II methanol maser.

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arXiv2014

Periodic Flare of the 6.7 GHz Methanol Maser in IRAS22198+6336

We have detected periodic flares of the 6.7 GHz methanol maser from an intermediate-mass star-forming region IRAS22198+6336. The maser was monitored daily in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Six flares were observed with a period of 34.6 days. The variation pattern is intermittent, and the flux ratio of the flaring and the quiescent states exceeds 30. Such intermittent variation with the short period uniquely characterizes the variation of the IRAS22198+6336 maser. At least five spectral components were identified. The spectral components varied almost synchronously, but their peak times differed by 1.8 days. These characteristics can be explained by the colliding-wind binary model.

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arXiv2013

Observations of 6.7 GHz Methanol Masers with EAVN I: VLBI Images of the first Epoch of Observations

Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) monitoring of the 6.7 GHz methanol maser allows us to measure the internal proper motions of the maser spots and therefore study the gas motion around high-mass young stellar objects. To this end, we have begun monitoring observations with the East-Asian VLBI Network. In this paper we present the results of the first epoch observation for 36 sources, including 35 VLBI images of the methanol maser. Since two independent sources were found in three images, respectively, images of 38 sources were obtained. In 34 sources, more than or equal to 10 spots were detected. The observed spatial scale of the maser distribution was from 9 to 4900 astronomical units, and the following morphological categories were observed: elliptical, arched, linear, paired, and complex. The position of the maser spot was determined to an accuracy of approximately 0.1 mas, sufficiently high to measure the internal proper motion from two years of monitoring observations. The VLBI observation, however, detected only approximately 20% of all maser emission, suggesting that the remaining 80% of the total flux was spread into an undetectable extended distribution. Therefore, in addition to high-resolution observations, it is important to observe the whole structure of the maser emission including extended low-brightness structures, to reveal the associated site of the maser and gas motion.

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arXiv2013

Internal Motion of 6.7-GHz Methanol Masers in H II Region S269

We present the first internal motion measurement of the 6.7-GHz methanol maser within S269, a small HII region in the outer Galaxy, which was carried out in 2006 and 2011 using the Japanese VLBI Network (JVN). Several maser groups and weak isolated spots were detected in an area spanning by ~200 mas (1000 AU). Three remarkable maser groups are aligned at a position angle of 80 degree. Two of three maser groups were also detected by a previous observation in 1998, which allowed us to study a long-term position variation of maser spots from 1998 to 2011. The angular separation between the two groups increased ~10 mas, which corresponds to an expansion velocity of ~10 km s^{-1}. Some velocity gradient (~10^{-2} km s^{-1} mas^{-1}) in the overall distribution was found. The internal motion between the maser groups support the hypothesis that the methanol masers in S269 could trace a bipolar outflow.

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arXiv2013

Direct diagnostics of forming massive stars: stellar pulsation and periodic variability of maser sources

The 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission, a tracer of forming massive stars, sometimes shows enigmatic periodic flux variations over several 10-100 days. In this Letter, we propose that this periodic variations could be explained by the pulsation of massive protostars growing under rapid mass accretion with rates of Mdot > 10^-3 Msun/yr. Our stellar evolution calculations predict that the massive protostars have very large radius exceeding 100 Rsun at maximum, and we here study the pulsational stability of such the bloated protostars by way of the linear stability analysis. We show that the protostar becomes pulsationally unstable with various periods of several 10-100 days, depending on different accretion rates. With the fact that the stellar luminosity when the star is pulsationally unstable also depends on the accretion rate, we derive the period-luminosity relation log (L/Lsun) = 4.62 + 0.98log(P/100 day), which is testable with future observations. Our models further show that the radius and mass of the pulsating massive protostar should also depend on the period. It would be possible to infer such protostellar properties and the accretion rate with the observed period. Measuring the maser periods enables a direct diagnosis of the structure of accreting massive protostars, which are deeply embedded in dense gas and inaccessible with other observations.

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arXiv2013

Multifrequency VLBI Observations of the Broad Absorption Line Quasar J1020+4320: Recently Restarted Jet Activity?

This paper reports very-long-baseline interferometry observations of the radio-loud broad absorption line (BAL) quasar J1020+4320 at 1.7, 2.3, 6.7, and 8.4 GHz using the Japanese VLBI network (JVN) and European VLBI network (EVN). The radio morphology is compact with a size of ~10 pc. The convex radio spectrum is stable over the last decade; an observed peak frequency of 3.2 GHz is equivalent to 9.5 GHz in the rest frame, suggesting an age of the order of ~100 years as a radio source, according to an observed correlation between linear size and peak frequency of compact steep spectrum (CSS) and giga-hertz peaked spectrum (GPS) radio sources. A low-frequency radio excess suggests relic of past jet activity. J1020+4320 may be one of the quasars with recurrent and short-lived jet activity during a BAL-outflowing phase.

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arXiv2012

Intermittent maser flare around the high mass young stellar object G353.273+0.641 II: Detection of a radio and molecular jet

We report the first detection of a radio-continuum and molecular jet associated with a dominant blue-shifted maser source, G353.273+0.641. A radio jet is extended 3000 au along NW-SE direction. H$_{2}$O masers are found to be clustered in the root of a bipolar radio jet. A molecular jet is detected by thermal SiO ($\upsilon$ = 0, $J$ = 2-1) emission. The SiO spectrum is extremely wide (-120 -- +87 km s$^{-1}$) and significantly blue-shift dominated, similar to the maser emission. The observed geometry and remarkable spectral similarity between H$_{2}$O maser and SiO strongly suggests the existence of a maser-scale ($\sim$ 340 au) molecular jet that is enclosed by the extended radio jet. We propose a "disc-masking" scenario as the origin of the strong blue-shift dominance, where an optically thick disc obscures a red-shifted lobe of a compact jet.

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arXiv2011

Bursting Activity in a High-Mass Star-Forming Region G33.64-0.21 Observed with the 6.7 GHz Methanol Maser

We report the detection of bursts of 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission in a high-mass star-forming region, G33.64-0.21. One of the spectral components of the maser in this source changed its flux density by 7 times that of the previous day, and it decayed with a timescale of 5 days. The burst occurred repeatedly in the spectral component, and no other components showed such variability. A VLBI observation with the Japanese VLBI Network (JVN) showed that the burst location was at the southwest edge of a spatial distribution, and the bursting phenomenon occurred in a region much smaller than 70 AU. We suggest an impulsive energy release like a stellar flare as a possible mechanism for the burst. These results imply that 6.7 GHz methanol masers could be a useful new probe for studying bursting activity in the process of star formation of high-mass YSOs with a high-resolution of AU scale.

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arXiv2008

A Synchronized Variation of the 6.7 GHz Methanol Maser in Cepheus A

We present the results of daily monitoring of 6.7 GHz methanol maser in Cepheus A (Cep A) using Yamaguchi 32-m radio telescope as well as the results of imaging observations conducted with the JVN (Japanese VLBI Network). We indentified five spectral features, which are grouped into red-shifted (-1.9 and -2.7 km/s) and blue-shifted (-3.8, -4.2, and -4.9 km/s), and we detected rapid variabilities of these maser features within a monitoring period of 81 days. The red-shifted features decreased in flux density to 50% of its initial value, while the flux density of the blue-shifted features rapidly increased within a 30 days. The time variation of these maser features showed two remarkable properties; synchronization and anti-correlation between the red-shifted and the blue-shifted. The spatial distribution of the maser spots obtained by the JVN observation showed an arclike structure with a scale of $\sim$1400 AU, and separations of the five maser features were found to be larger than 100 AU. The absolute position of the methanol maser was also obtained based on the phase-referencing observations, and the arclike structure were found to be associated with the Cep A-HW2 object, with the elongation of the arclike structure nearly perpendicularly to the radio continuum jet from the Cep A-HW2 object. These properties of the masers, namely, the synchronization of flux variation, and the spectral and spatial isolation of features, suggest that the collisional excitation by shock wave from a common exciting source is unlikely. Instead, the synchronized time variation of the masers can be explained if all the maser features are excited by infrared radiation from dust which is heated by a common exciting source with a rapid variability.

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arXiv2007

Mapping Observations of 6.7 GHz Methanol Masers with Japanese VLBI Network

We have observed 13 methanol maser sources associated with massive star-forming regions; W3(OH), Mon R2, S 255, W 33A, IRAS 18151-1208, G 24.78+0.08, G 29.95-0.02, IRAS 18556+0136, W 48, OH 43.8-0.1, ON 1, Cep A and NGC 7538 at 6.7 GHz using the Japanese VLBI Network (JVN). Twelve of the thirteen sources were detected at our longest baseline of $\sim$50 M$λ$, and their images are presented. Seven of them are the first VLBI images at 6.7 GHz. This high detection rate and the small fringe spacing of $\sim$4 milli-arcsecond suggest that most of the methanol maser sources have compact structure. Given this compactness as well as the known properties of long-life and small internal-motion, this methanol maser line is suitable for astrometry with VLBI.

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arXiv2006

Japanese VLBI Network

We present the basic features and the activities of Japanese VLBI network (JVN), a newly-established VLBI network with baselines ranging from 50 to 2560 km spreading across the Japanese islands, and capable of observing at 6.7, 8.4, and 22 GHz. We show a number of results of JVN observations: 8.4-GHz continuum images of a Giga-hertz Peaked Spectrum (GPS) source and radio-loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s), the spatial and velocity structures of water masers in NML Cygni as well as methanol masers in Cep A, and demonstrative observations with the bigradient phase referencing.

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