The SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey. V. Clustered Protostars

Abstract

We present ∼8–40 μm SOFIA-FORCAST images of seven regions of “clustered” star formation as part of the SOFIA Massive Star Formation Survey. We identify a total of 34 protostar candidates and build their spectral energy distributions (SEDs). We fit these SEDs with a grid of radiative transfer models based on the turbulent core accretion (TCA) theory to derive key protostellar properties, including initial core mass, Mc, clump environment mass surface density, Σcl, and current protostellar mass, m*. We also carry out empirical graybody (GB) estimation of Σcl, which allows a case of restricted SED fitting within the TCA model grid. We also release version 2.0 of the open-source Python package sedcreator, which is designed to automate the aperture photometry and SED building and fitting process for sources in clustered environments, where flux contamination from close neighbors typically complicates the process. Using these updated methods, SED fitting yields values of Mc ∼ 30–200 M⊙, Σcl,SED ∼ 0.1–3 g cm−2, and m* ∼ 4–50 M⊙. The GB fitting yields smaller values of Σcl,GB ≲ 1 g cm−2. From these results, we do not find evidence for a critical Σcl needed to form massive (≳8 M⊙) stars. However, we do find tentative evidence for a dearth of the most massive (m* ≳ 30 M⊙) protostars in the clustered regions, suggesting a potential impact of environment on the stellar initial mass function.