1. ngVLA Synthetic Observations of Ionized Gas in Massive Protostars
- Author
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Jáquez-Domínguez, Jesús M., Galván-Madrid, Roberto, Trejo-Cruz, Alfonso, Carrasco-González, Carlos, Fritz, Jacopo, Lizano, Susana, Palau, Aina, Izquierdo, Andrés F., Rodríguez, Luis F., Pasetto, Alice, Kurtz, Stanley, Peters, Thomas, Jiménez-Andrade, Eric F., and Zapata, Luis A.
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics - Abstract
Massive star formation involves significant ionization in the innermost regions near the central object, such as gravitationally trapped H II regions, jets, ionized disks, or winds. Resolved observations of the associated continuum and recombination line emission are crucial for guiding theory. The next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) will enable unprecedented observations of thermal emission with 1 mas resolution, providing a new perspective on massive star formation at scales down to a few astronomical units at kiloparsec distances. This work presents synthetic interferometric ngVLA observations of the free-free continuum (93-GHz band), $\mathrm{H41\alpha}$, and $\mathrm{H38\alpha}$ recombination lines from ionized jets and disks around massive protostars. Using the sf3dmodels Python package, we generate gas distributions based on analytical models, which are then processed through the RADMC-3D radiative transfer code. Our results indicate that the ngVLA can easily resolve, both spatially and spectrally, the ionized jet from a 15 $\mathrm{M_\odot}$ protostar at 700 pc, distinguishing between collimated jets and wide-angle winds, and resolving their launching radii, widths, and any substructure down to a few astronomical units. Detailed studies of radio jets launched by massive protostars will be feasible up to distances of $\sim 2$ kpc. Furthermore, ngVLA will be able to study in detail the ionized disks around massive ($> 10~\mathrm{M_\odot}$) protostars up to distances from 4 to 12 kpc, resolving their kinematics and enabling the measurement of their central masses across the Galaxy. These observations can be conducted with on-source integrations of only a few hours., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ
- Published
- 2025