Excited Hydroxyl Outflow in the High-mass Star-forming Region G34.26 + 0.15

Abstract

G34.26 + 0.15 is a region of high-mass star formation that contains a broad range of young stellar objects in different stages of evolution, including a hot molecular core, hypercompact H ii regions, and a prototypical cometary ultracompact H ii region. Previous high-sensitivity single-dish observations by our group resulted in the detection of broad 6035 MHz OH absorption in this region; the line showed a significant blueshifted asymmetry indicative of molecular gas expansion. We present high-sensitivity Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) observations of the 6035 MHz OH line conducted to image the absorption and investigate its origin with respect to the different star formation sites in the region. In addition, we report detection of 6030 MHz OH absorption with the VLA and further observations of 4.7 GHz and 6.0 GHz OH lines obtained with the Arecibo Telescope. The 6030 MHz OH line shows a very similar absorption profile as the 6035 MHz OH line. We found that the 6035 MHz OH line absorption region is spatially unresolved at ∼2″ scales, and it is coincident with one of the bright ionized cores of the cometary H ii region that shows broad radio recombination line emission. We discuss a scenario where the OH absorption is tracing the remnants of a pole-on molecular outflow that is being ionized inside-out by the ultracompact H ii region.