FAUST XII. Accretion streamers and jets in the VLA 1623--2417 protocluster
Abstract
The ALMA interferometer has played a key role in revealing a new component of the Sun-like star forming process: the molecular streamers, i.e. structures up to thousands of au long funneling material non-axisymmetrically to disks. In the context of the FAUST ALMA LP, the archetypical VLA1623-2417 protostellar cluster has been imaged at 1.3 mm in the SO(56--45), SO(66--55), and SiO(5--4) line emission at the spatial resolution of 50 au. We detect extended SO emission, peaking towards the A and B protostars. Emission blue-shifted down to 6.6 km s-1 reveals for the first time a long ( 2000 au) accelerating streamer plausibly feeding the VLA1623 B protostar. Using SO, we derive for the first time an estimate of the excitation temperature of an accreting streamer: 339 K. The SO column density is 1014 cm-2, and the SO/H2 abundance ratio is 10-8. The total mass of the streamer is 3 × 10-3 Msun, while its accretion rate is 3--5 × 10-7 Msun yr-1. This is close to the mass accretion rate of VLA1623 B, in the 0.6--3 × 10-7 Msun yr-1 range, showing the importance of the streamer in contributing to the mass of protostellar disks. The highest blue- and red-shifted SO velocities behave as the SiO(5--4) emission, the latter species detected for the first time in VLA1623-2417: the emission is compact (100-200 au), and associated only with the B protostar. The SO excitation temperature is 100 K, supporting the occurrence of shocks associated with the jet, traced by SiO.