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Published October 20, 1996 | Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Accretion Disks around Class 0 Protostars: The Case of VLA 1623

Abstract

Continuum emission at 220 and 355 GHz from the prototype class 0 source VLA 1623 has been detected using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope-Caltech Submillimeter Observatory interferometer. Gaussian fits to the data place an upper limit of 70 AU on the half-width at half-maximum radius of the emission, which implies an upper limit of ~175 AU for the cutoff radius of the circumstellar disk in the system. In the context of existing collapse models, this disk could be magnetically supported on the largest scales and have an age of ~6 × 10^4 yr, consistent with previous suggestions that class 0 sources are quite young. The innermost region of the disk within ~6 AU is likely to be in centrifugal support, which is likely large enough to provide a drive for the outflow according to current theoretical models. Alternatively, if 175 AU corresponds to the centrifugal radius of the disk, the age of the system is ~2 × 10^5 yr, closer to age estimates for class I sources.

Additional Information

©1996. The American Astronomical Society. Received 1996 May 28; accepted 1996 August 5. We thank the referee, Lee Mundy, in particular, for pointing our attention to the limit provided by the bolometric luminosity of the source. C. D. W. and R. E. P. thank Peter Sutherland for help with numerical fitting techniques. The research of R. E. P. and C. D. W. is supported through grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. J. E. C. gratefully acknowledges support from a NSF-YI Award, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. The JCMT is operated by the Royal Observatories on behalf of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the National Research Council of Canada. Research at the CSO is supported by NSF grant 90-15755.

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August 22, 2023
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October 25, 2023