ALMA Survey of Orion Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (ALMASOP): Molecular jets and Episodic Accretion in Protostars

Protostellar outflows and jets are almost ubiquitous characteristics during the mass accretion phase, and encode the history of stellar accretion, complex-organic molecule (COM) formation, and planet formation. Episodic jets are likely connected to episodic accretion through the disk. Despite the importance, studies on episodic accretion and ejection links have not been done yet in a systematic fashion using high sensitivity and high resolution observations. To explore episodic accretion mechanisms and the chronologies of episodic events, we investigated 39 fields containing protostars with ALMA observations of CO, SiO, and 1.3mm continuum emission. We detected SiO emission in 19 fields, where 17 sources are driving molecular jets. Jet velocities, mass-loss rates, mass-accretion rates, and periods of accretion events appear to have some dependence on the driving forces of the jet (e.g., bolometric luminosity, envelope mass). Next, velocities and mass-loss rates appear to be somewhat correlated with the surrounding envelope mass, suggesting that the presence of high mass around protostars increases the ejection-accretion activity. We determine mean periods of ejection events of 20−175 years for our sample, which could be associated with perturbation zones of ∼ 2−25 au extent around the protostars. Also, mean ejection periods show an apparent anti-correlation with the envelope mass, where high-accretion rates may trigger more frequent ejection events. The observed periods of outburst/ejection are much shorter than the freeze-out time scale of the simplest COMs like CH3OH, suggesting that episodic events could affect the ice-gas balance inside and around the snowline.