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The Structure of the Radio Recombination Line Maser Emission in the Envelope of MWC349A

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2018

James M. Moran ,
Qizhou Zhang  and
Deanna L. Emery
James M. Moran
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Mail Stop 42, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA email: jmoran@cfa.harvard.edu
Qizhou Zhang
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Mail Stop 42, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA email: jmoran@cfa.harvard.edu
Deanna L. Emery
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Mail Stop 42, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA email: jmoran@cfa.harvard.edu
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Abstract

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The Submillimeter Array (SMA) has been used to image the emission from radio recombination lines of hydrogen at subarcsecond angular resolution from the young high-mass star MWC349A in the H26α, H30α, and H31α transitions at 353, 232, and 211 GHz, respectively. Emission was seen over a range of 80 km s−1 in velocity and 50 mas (corresponding to 60 AU for a distance of 1200 pc). The emission at each frequency has two distinct components, one from gas in a nearly edge-on annular disk structure in Keplerian motion, and another from gas lifted off the disk at distances of up to about 25 AU from the star. The slopes of the position-velocity (PV) curves for the disk emission show a monotonic progression of the emission radius with frequency with relative radii of 0.85 ± 0.04, 1, and 1.02 ± 0.01 for the H26α, H30α, and H31α transitions, respectively. This trend is consistent with theoretical excitation models of maser emission from a region where the density decreases with radius and the lower transitions are preferentially excited at higher densities. The mass is difficult to estimate from the PV diagrams because the wind components dominate the emission at the disk edges. The mass estimate is constrained to be only in the range of 10–30 solar masses. The distribution of the wind emission among the transitions is surprisingly different, which reflects its sensitivity to excitation conditions. The wind probably extracts significant angular momentum from the system.

Keywords

masers–stars: emission-lineBe–stars: windsoutflows–radio lines: stars
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 13 , Symposium S336: Astrophysical Masers: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe , September 2017 , pp. 235 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2018 

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