# From clouds to protoplanetary disks: the astrochemical link

4-8 October 2015
Hans Harnack Haus
Europe/Berlin timezone
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Poster session

# The kinematics of water in a deeply-embedded low-mass protostar on solar system scales

## Speakers

• Dr. John TOBIN

## Content

Water is a crucial molecule in the physics and chemistry of star- and planet formation, but its evolution from cold cores to disks is still poorly constrained. The gas-phase abundance of water varies between cold and warm regions up to a factor of $10^{5}$ and this abundance variation makes water an excellent diagnostic of the physical structure in these sources. The origin of the warm water emission in deeply-embedded low-mass protostars is still debated, however. Current options include the innermost envelope (‘hot corino’), heated by the luminosity from the central protostar; a young disk heated by shocks related to ongoing accretion or the warm disk surface layers heated radiatively by the young star. Determining the location and kinematics of the warm water is important because it provides insights into whether water, and the locked up complex organics, actually moves from the outer envelope into the disk, and if so, whether it enters the disk mostly as gas or ice. Evolutionary models suggest that water and complex species enter the disk mostly as ice but this is so far unconfirmed observationally. We have mapped several isotopologues of water toward a deeply-embedded low-mass protostellar source. The detected water emission shows a clear velocity gradient, perpendicular to the main outflow axis (see figure). I will present the results from the kinematical analysis of the mapped water emission, and the implications it may have for the interpretation of any compact structure in this Class 0 source.