A new formation scenario of a counter-rotating circumstellar disk: Spiral-arm accretion from a circumbinary disk in a triple protostar system

Abstract

Abstract We present the evolution of rotational directions of circumstellar disks in a triple protostar system simulated from a turbulent molecular cloud core with no magnetic field. We find a new formation pathway of a counter-rotating circumstellar disk in such triple systems. The tertiary protostar forms via the circumbinary disk fragmentation and the initial rotational directions of all three circumstellar disks are almost parallel to that of the orbital motion of the binary system. Their mutual gravito-hydrodynamical interaction for the subsequent ∼104 yr greatly disturbs the orbit of the tertiary, and the rotational directions of the tertiary disk and star are reversed due to the spiral-arm accretion of the circumbinary disk. The counter-rotation of the tertiary circumstellar disk continues to the end of the simulation (∼6.4 × 104 yr after its formation), implying that the counter-rotating disk is long-lived. This new formation pathway during the disk evolution in Class 0/I young stellar objects possibly explains the counter-rotating disks recently discovered by ALMA.