Simultaneous Evidence of Edge Collapse and Hub-filament Configurations: A Rare Case Study of a Giant Molecular Filament, G45.3+0.1

Abstract

We study multiwavelength and multiscale data to investigate the kinematics of molecular gas associated with the star-forming complexes G045.49+00.04 (G45E) and G045.14+00.14 (G45W) in the Aquila constellation. An analysis of the FUGIN 13CO(1–0) line data unveils the presence of a giant molecular filament (GMF G45.3+0.1; length ∼75 pc, mass ∼1.1 × 106 M ⊙) having a coherent velocity structure at [53, 63] km s−1. The GMF G45.3+0.1 hosts G45E and G45W complexes at its opposite ends. We find large-scale velocity oscillations along GMF G45.3+0.1, which also reveals the linear velocity gradients of −0.064 and +0.032 km s−1 pc−1 at its edges. The photometric analysis of point-like sources shows the clustering of young stellar object (YSO) candidate sources at the filament’s edges where the presence of dense gas and H ii regions are also spatially observed. The Herschel continuum maps along with the CHIMPS 13CO(3–2) line data unravel the presence of parsec scale hub-filament systems (HFSs) in both sites, G45E and G45W. Our study suggests that the global collapse of GMF G45.3+0.1 is end dominated, with the addition to the signature of global nonisotropic collapse at the edges. Overall, GMF G45.3+0.1 is the first observational sample of filament where the edge-collapse and the hub-filament configurations are simultaneously investigated. These observations open the new possibility of massive star formation, including the formation of HFSs.