Keywords

HH 211-mms is one of the youngest Class 0 protostellar systems in Perseus, at a distance of ∼235 pc. We have mapped its central region at up to ∼7 au (003) resolution. A dusty disk is seen deeply embedded in a flattened envelope, with an intensity jump in the dust continuum at ∼350 GHz. It is nearly edge-on and is almost exactly perpendicular to the jet axis. It has a size of ∼30 au along the major axis. It is geometrically thick, indicating that the (sub)millimeter light-emitting grains have yet to settle to the midplane. Its inner part is expected to have transformed into a Keplerian rotating disk with a radius of ∼10 au. A rotating disk atmosphere and a compact rotating bipolar outflow are detected in SO N_J = 8₉ − 7₈. The outflow fans out from the inner disk surfaces and is rotating in the same direction as the flattened envelope, and hence could trace a disk wind carrying away angular momentum from the inner disk. From the rotation of the disk atmosphere, the protostellar mass is estimated to be ≲50 M_Jup. Together with results from the literature, our result favors a model where the disk radius grows linearly with the protostellar mass, as predicted by models of pre-stellar dense core evolution that asymptotes to an r⁻¹ radial profile for both the column density and angular velocity.

HH 211 is a nearby young protostellar system with a highly collimated jet. We have mapped it in 352 GHz continuum, SiO (J = 8 − 7), and HCO⁺ (J = 4 − 3) emission at up to ∼02 resolution with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). The continuum source is now resolved into two sources, SMM1 and SMM2, with a separation of ∼ 84 AU. SMM1 is seen at the center of the jet, probably tracing a (inner) dusty disk around the protostar driving the jet. SMM2 is seen to the southwest of SMM1 and may trace an envelope-disk around a small binary companion. A flattened envelope-disk is seen in HCO⁺ around SMM1 with a radius of ∼ 80 AU perpendicular to the jet axis. Its velocity structure is consistent with a rotation motion and can be fitted with a Keplerian law that yields a mass of ∼50 ± 15 M_Jup (a mass of a brown dwarf) for the protostar. Thus, the protostar could be the lowest mass source known to have a collimated jet and a rotating flattened envelope-disk. A small-scale (∼200 AU) low-speed (∼2 km s⁻¹) outflow is seen in HCO⁺ around the jet axis extending from the envelope-disk. It seems to rotate in the same direction as the envelope-disk and may carry away part of the angular momentum from the envelope-disk. The jet is seen in SiO close to ∼100 AU from SMM1. It is seen with a "C-shaped" bending. It has a transverse width of ≲ 40 AU and a velocity of ∼ 170 ± 60 km s⁻¹. A possible velocity gradient is seen consistently across its innermost pair of knots, ∼0.5 km s⁻¹ at ∼10 AU, consistent with the sense of rotation of the envelope-disk. If this gradient is an upper limit of the true rotational gradient of the jet, then the jet carries away a very small amount of angular momentum of ≲ 5 AU km s⁻¹ and thus must be launched from the very inner edge of the disk near the corotation radius.