Fragmentation at the Earliest Phase of Massive Star Formation

We present 1.3 mm continuum and spectral line images of two massive molecular clumps P1 and P2 in the G28.34+0.06 region with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). While the two clumps contain masses of 1000 and 880 M _sun, respectively, P1 has a luminosity OF <10² L _sun, and a lower gas temperature and smaller line width than P2. Thus, P1 appears to be at a much earlier stage of massive star formation than P2. The high-resolution SMA observations reveal two distinctive cores in P2 with masses of 97 and 49 M _sun, respectively. The 4 GHz spectral bandpass captures line emission from CO isotopologues, SO, CH₃OH, and CH₃CN, similar to hot molecular cores harboring massive young stars. The P1 clump, on the other hand, is resolved into five cores along the filament with masses from 22 to 64 M _sun and an average projected separation of 0.19 pc. Except ¹²CO, no molecular line emission is detected toward the P1 cores at a 1σ rms of 0.1 K. Since strong ¹²CO and C¹⁸O emissions are seen with the single-dish telescope at a resolution of 11'', the nondetection of these lines with the SMA indicates a depletion factor up to 10³. While the spatial resolution of the SMA is better than the expected Jeans length, the masses in P1 cores are much larger than the thermal Jeans mass, indicating the importance of turbulence and/or magnetic fields in cloud fragmentation. The hierarchical structures in the P1 region provide a glimpse of the initial phase of massive star and cluster formation.