AN EXTREMELY HIGH VELOCITY MOLECULAR JET SURROUNDED BY AN IONIZED CAVITY IN THE PROTOSTELLAR SOURCE SERPENS SMM1

ABSTRACT We report Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of a one-sided, high-velocity (∼80 km s−1) CO(J = 2 → 1 ) jet powered by the intermediate-mass protostellar source Serpens SMM1-a. The highly collimated molecular jet is flanked at the base by a wide-angle cavity; the walls of the cavity can be seen in both 4 cm free-free emission detected by the Very Large Array and 1.3 mm thermal dust emission detected by ALMA. This is the first time that ionization of an outflow cavity has been directly detected via free-free emission in a very young, embedded Class 0 protostellar source that is still powering a molecular jet. The cavity walls are ionized either by UV photons escaping from the accreting protostellar source or by the precessing molecular jet impacting the walls. These observations suggest that ionized outflow cavities may be common in Class 0 protostellar sources, shedding further light on the radiation, outflow, and jet environments in the youngest, most embedded forming stars.