Dongting Yang, Hongli Liu, Sheng‐Li Qin, Tie Liu, Anandmayee Tej, Siju Zhang, Xunchuan Liu, Fengwei Xu, Guido Garay, Lei Zhu, Patricio Sanhueza, Xiaofeng Mai, Wenyu Jiao, P. F. Goldsmith, Sami Dib, Pablo García, Di Li, Jinhua He, A. Y. Yang, Prasanta Gorai, Suinan Zhang, Yankun Zhang, Jianjun Zhou, Mika Juvela, James O. Chibueze, Chang Won Lee, Jihye Hwang, L. Bronfman, Xindi Tang, Archana Soam, Tapas Baug, Yichen Zhang, Swagat Ranjan Das, L. K. Dewangan, L. Viktor Tóth
Abstract Although frequently reported in observations, the definitive confirmation of high-mass prestellar cores has remained elusive, presenting a persistent challenge in star formation studies. Using two-band observational data from the 3 mm ATOMS and 1.3 mm QUARKS surveys, we report a high-mass prestellar core candidate, C2, located on the side of the bright-rimmed cloud IRAS 18290-0924. The C2 core identified from the 3 mm continuum data of the ATOMS survey (∼2 ″ , ∼10,000 au at 5.3 kpc) has a mass ranging from 27 to 68 M ⊙ for temperatures 10–22 K within a radius of ∼2800 au. The highest-resolution (∼0 . ″ 3, ∼1500 au) observations of this source presented to date from the QUARKS survey reveal no evidence of further fragmentation. Further analysis of a total ∼10 GHz bandwidth of molecular line survey does not find star formation activity (e.g., outflows and ionized gas) associated with the core, with a few molecular lines of cold gas detected only. Additionally, virial analysis indicates the C2 core is gravitationally bound ( α vir ∼ 0.1−0.3) and thus could be undergoing collapse toward star formation. These results strongly establish a candidate for a high-mass prestellar core, contributing to the very limited number of such sources known to date.