A kinematic study of the integral shaped filament: what roles do filaments play in forming young stellar clusters?

Abstract

Young protoclusters (embedded stellar clusters) are responsible for the vast majority of star formation currently occurring in the Galaxy. Recent observations suggest a scenario in which filamentary structures in the interstellar medium represent the first step towards precluster clumps and eventually star formation. Whether filaments continuously fuel the star formation process when the cluster accretes material is still an open question. In this paper, we present a case study of the famous ‘integral shaped filament’ (ISF) in the Orion A molecular cloud and we seek to study the kinematics which is truly originated from the ISF. We firstly define the central ridge of the ISF with NH3, 12CO, 13CO and N2H+. Undulations are present in all the ridges. Moreover, a large scale offset is apparent in the ridges as derived by different tracers, which may be explained by the slingshot mechanism proposed by Stutz & Gould. We fit the velocity field of the ISF and find the derived velocity gradient is about 0.7 km s−1 pc−1 which may come from an overall contraction. We propose a method to check the accretion flow along the ISF by using the velocity deviations of different molecular tracers, which is better than the common method of using the velocity distribution of one tracer alone. Using the velocity deviations, we also find that OMC-1 to 5 are located close to the local extrema of the fluctuations, which may demonstrate that gas flows toward each clump along the ISF.