Both bulk rotation and local turbulence have been widely suggested to drive the fragmentation in collapsing cores that produces multiple star systems. Even when the two mechanisms predict different alignments for stellar spins and orbits, subsequent internal or external interactions can drive multiple systems toward or away from alignment, thus masking their formation processes. Here, we demonstrate that the geometrical and dynamical relationship between a binary system and its surrounding bulk envelope provide the crucial distinction between fragmentation models. We find that the circumstellar disks of the binary protostellar system L1551 IRS 5 are closely parallel, not just with each other but also with their surrounding flattened envelope. Measurements of the relative proper motion of the binary components spanning nearly 30 years indicate an orbital motion related to that of the envelope rotation. Eliminating orbital solutions whereby the circumstellar disks would be tidally truncated to sizes smaller than observed, the remaining solutions favor a circular or low-eccentricity orbit tilted by up to ∼25°from the circumstellar disks. Turbulence-driven fragmentation can generate local angular momentum to produce a coplanar binary system, but this would have no particular relationship to the system's surrounding envelope. Instead, the observed properties conform with predictions for rotationally driven fragmentation. If the fragments were produced at different heights or on opposite sides of the mid-plane in the flattened central region of a rotating core, the resulting protostars would then exhibit circumstellar disks parallel with the surrounding envelope but tilted from the orbital plane, as is observed.
Supernova remnant (SNR) W28 is well known for its classic hadronic scenario, in which the TeV cosmic rays (CRs) released at early stage of this mid-aged SNR are illuminating nearby molecular clouds (MCs). Overwhelming evidences have shown that the northeast of the SNR (W28-North) has already encountered with the MC clumps. Through this broken shell -W28-North, we believe the CRs with energy down to <1 GeV to be able to be injected into nearby MCs. To further testify this hadronic scenario, we first analyse the 9 years Fermi-LAT data in/around W28 with energy down to 0.3 GeV. Our
Context. The Crab pulsar and its nebula are the origin of relativistic electrons which can be observed through their synchrotron and inverse Compton emission. The transition between synchrotron-dominated and inverse-Compton-dominated emissions takes place at ≈109 eV. Aims. The short-term (lasting for one week to months) flux variability of the synchrotron emission from the most energetic electrons is investigated with data from ten years of observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope in the energy range from 60 MeV to 600 MeV. Methods. We reconstructed the off-pulse light curve reconstructed from phase-resolved data. The corresponding histogram of flux measurements was used to identify distributions of flux-states and the statistical significance of a lower-flux component was estimated with dedicated simulations of mock light curves. The energy spectra for different flux states were also reconstructed. Results. We confirm the presence of flaring-states which follow a log-normal flux distribution. Additionally, we discovered a low-flux state where the flux drops to as low as 18.4% of the intermediate-state average flux and remains there for several weeks. The transition time is observed to be as short as two days. The energy spectrum during the low-flux state resembles the extrapolation of the inverse-Compton spectrum measured at energies beyond several GeV energy, implying that the high-energy part of the synchrotron emission is dramatically depressed. Conclusions. The low-flux state found here and the transition time of at most ten days indicate that the bulk (>75%) of the synchrotron emission above 108 eV originates in a compact volume with apparent angular size of θ ≈ 0″.4 tvar/(5 d). We tentatively infer that the so-called inner knot feature is the origin of the bulk of the γ-ray emission.
We present observations at 7 mm that fully resolve the two circumstellar disks, and a reanalyses of archival observations at 3.5 cm that resolve along their major axes the two ionized jets, of the class I binary protostellar system L1551 NE. We show that the two circumstellar disks are better fit by a shallow inner and steep outer power-law than a truncated power-law. The two disks have very different transition radii between their inner and outer regions of ∼18.6 AU and ∼8.9 AU respectively. Assuming that they are intrinsically circular and geometrically thin, we find that the two circumstellar disks are parallel with each other and orthogonal in projection to their respective ionized jets.Furthermore, the two disks are closely aligned if not parallel with their circumbinary disk. Over an interval of ∼10 yr, source B (possessing the circumsecondary disk) has moved northwards with respect to and likely away from source A, indicating an orbital motion in the same direction as the rotational motion of their circumbinary disk. All the aforementioned elements therefore share the same axis for their angular momentum, indicating that L1551 NE is a product of rotationally-driven fragmentation of its parental core. Assuming a circular orbit, the relative disk sizes are compatible with theoretical predictions for tidal truncation by a binary system having a mass ratio of ∼0.2, in agreement with the reported relative separations of the two protostars from 3 the center of their circumbinary disk. The transition radii of both disks, however, are a factor of 1.5 smaller than their predicted tidally-truncated radii.
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