High-resolution ALMA Study of the Proto-Brown-Dwarf Candidate L328-IRS

We present our observational attempts to precisely measure the central mass of a proto-brown dwarf candidate, L328-IRS, in order to investigate whether L328-IRS is in the substellar mass regime. Observations were made for the central region of L328-IRS with the dust continuum and CO isotopologue line emission at ALMA band 6, discovering the detailed outflow activities and a deconvolved disk structure of a size of ${\sim}87AU{\times}{\sim}37AU$. We investigated the rotational velocities as a function of the disk radius, finding that its motions between 130 AU and 60 AU are partially fitted with a Keplerian orbit by a stellar object of ${\sim}0.30M_{\odot}$, while the motions within 60 AU do not follow any Keplerian orbit at all. This makes it difficult to lead a reliable estimation of the mass of L328-IRS. Nonetheless, our ALMA observations were useful enough to well constrain the inclination angle of the outflow cavity of L328-IRS as ${\sim}66^{\circ}$ degree, enabling us to better determine the mass accretion rate of ${\sim}8.9{\times}10^{-7}M_{\odot}yr-1$.From assumptions that the internal luminosity of L328-IRS is mostly due to this mass accretion process in the disk, or that L328-IRS has mostly accumulated the mass through this constant accretion rate during its outflow activity, its mass was estimated to be ${\sim}0.012-0.023M_{\odot}$, suggesting L328-IRS to be a substellar object. However, we leave our identification of L328-IRS as a proto-brown dwarf to be tentative because of various uncertainties especially regarding the mass accretion rate.