Discovery of large-scale gravitational infall in a massive protostellar cluster

We report Mopra Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), Anglo-Australian Telescope and Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment observations of a molecular clump in Carina, BYF73 = G286.21+0.17, which give evidence of large-scale gravitational infall in the dense gas. From the millimetre and far-infrared data, the clump has a mass of ~2 x 10 4 M ⊙ , luminosity of ~2-3 x 10 4 L ⊙ and diameter of ~0.9 pc. From radiative transfer modelling, we derive a mass infall rate of ~3.4 x 10 -2 M ⊙ yr -1 . If confirmed, this rate for gravitational infall in a molecular core or clump may be the highest yet seen. The near-infrared K-band imaging shows an adjacent compact H II region and IR cluster surrounded by a shell-like photodissociation region showing H 2 emission. At the molecular infall peak, the K imaging also reveals a deeply embedded group of stars with associated H 2 emission. The combination of these features is very unusual, and we suggest that they indicate the ongoing formation of a massive star cluster. We discuss the implications of these data for competing theories of massive star formation.