2010MNRAS.406..102K

We address the question of whether the formation of high-mass stars is similar to or differs from that of solar mass stars through new molecular line observations and modelling of the accretion flow around the massive protostar IRAS20126+4104. We combine new observations of NH₃(1,1) and (2,2) made at the Very Large Array (VLA), new observations of CH₃CN(13-12) made at the Submillimeter Array, previous VLA observations of NH₃(3,3) and NH₃(4,4) and previous Plateau de Bure observations of C³⁴S(2-1), C³⁴S(5-4) and CH₃CN(12-11) to obtain a data set of molecular lines covering 15-419 K in excitation energy. We compare these observations against simulated molecular line spectra predicted from a model for high-mass star formation based on a scaled-up version of the standard disc-envelope paradigm developed for accretion flows around low-mass stars. We find that in accord with the standard paradigm, the observations require both a warm, dense, rapidly rotating disc and a cold, diffuse infalling envelope. This paper suggests that accretion processes around 10 M_☉ stars are similar to those of solar mass stars.