SF-05-0020

Salt-bearing disks around high-mass young stellar objects (brinaries)

Adam Ginsburg

Disks around young stars are the sites of planet formation and are becoming
very well-understood. By contrast, the disks around high mass stars have only
recently been discovered and are poorly characterized at best. High-mass stars
are almost exclusively seen in high-order multiple systems, hinting that
perhaps disks around massive stars could be the sites of companion formation.
At the least, disk kinematics are a powerful tool for accurately measuring
dynamical masses. I will show that salt, NaCl and KCl, water, H2O, and a few
other rare species produce emission that traces disks. The sample of brinaries
is now around 10 sources, but it is likely that these lines present a broadly
applicable tool for kinematic mass measurement.