M17 MIR: A Massive Star Is Forming via Episodic Mass Accretion

We analyzed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) band 6 data for the outbursting massive protostar M17 MIR. The ALMA CO J = 2–1 data reveal a collimated and bipolar north–south outflow from M17 MIR. The blueshifted outflow exhibits four CO knots (N1 to N4) along the outflow axis, while the redshifted outflow appears as a single knot (S1). The extremely high velocity (EHV) emissions of N1 and S1 are jetlike and contain subknots along the outflow axis. Assuming the nearest EHV subknots trace the ejecta from the accretion outbursts in the past decades, a tangential ejection velocity of ∼421 km s −1 is derived for M17 MIR. Assuming the same velocity, the dynamical times of the multiple ejecta, traced by the four blueshifted CO knots, range from 20 to 364 yr. The four blueshifted CO knots imply four clustered accretion outbursts with a duration of tens of years in the past few hundred years. The intervals between the four clustered accretion outbursts are also about tens of years. These properties of the four clustered accretion outbursts are in line with the disk gravitational instability and fragmentation model. The episodic accretion history of M17 MIR traced by episodic outflow suggests that a massive star can form from a lower-mass protostar via frequent episodic accretion events triggered by disk gravitational instability and fragmentation. The first detection of the knotty outflow from an outbursting massive protostar suggests that mass ejections accompanied with accretion events could serve as an effective diagnostic tool for the episodic accretion histories of massive protostars.