The circumstellar environment of high mass protostellar objects

III. Evidence of infall?

¹ Physics Department, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK e-mail: [Gary.Fuller;Stewart.Williams]@manchester.ac.uk
² Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS 78, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: tksridha@cfa.harvard.edu

Received: 2 October 2004
Accepted: 27 July 2005

Abstract

The results are presented of a molecular line survey to search for the spectral signature of infall towards 77 850 μm continuum sources believed to be candidate high mass protostellar objects. Up to six different transitions, HCO⁺ ,  and , H₂CO , N₂H⁺  and H¹³CO⁺  , were observed towards each source. Towards the peak of the 850 μm emission, N₂H⁺ was typically strong, with a peak antenna temperature of ~1.5 K, with a typical linewidth of ~2 km s^-1. The good agreement between the velocity and velocity width of the N₂H⁺  and H¹³CO⁺ emission suggests that both species are tracing similar material in the sources. With respect to the velocity of the N₂H⁺, there is a statistically significant excess of blue asymmetric line profiles in both the HCO⁺  and H₂CO  transitions. This excess reaches levels similar to that seen towards samples of low mass protostars, and suggests that the material around these high mass sources is infalling. We identify 22 promising candidate infall sources which show at least one blue asymmetric line profile and no red asymmetric profiles. The infall velocity is estimated to be in the range of 0.1 km s^-1  to 1 km s^-1  with an implied mass accretion rate of between  /yr and 10^-3 /yr.