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The Dynamics of Infall in Class 0 Protostars: A Case of Multiple Streamers in Lupus 3-MMS

Abstract

Understanding how material accretes onto a rotationally supported disk from the surrounding envelope of gas and dust in the youngest protostellar systems is important for describing how these disks are formed. Recently, many observations have confirmed the existence of so-called "streamers", which are extended filamentary-like structures feeding a reservoir of mass to these protostellar disks. We present one such case of a unique Class 0 protostar, Lupus 3-MMS, which shows multiple infalling streamers along the edge of the outflows in C18O. We isolate these streamers using dendrograms and compare to a simple model of infalling trajectories, which matches the observations very well (>96% in four out of five of the dendrogram structures). We derive several properties of the streamers, such as their mass and infall rate, and compare them in the context of other confirmed streamers in Class 0 protostars and values from MHD simulations of protostellar disk formation. Our results confirm the dynamically infalling nature of multiple streamers in Lupus 3-MMS and show that even these simple models can be good approximations when compared to observations.