EXPLORING THE NATURE OF COMPACT RADIO SOURCES ASSOCIATED TO UCHII REGIONS

Abstract

We present Very Large Array 7 mm continuum observations of four ultracompact (UC) HII regions, observed previously at 1.3 cm, in order to investigate the nature of the compact radio sources associated with these regions. We detect a total of seven compact radio sources, four of them with thermal emission, and two compact radio sources with clear non- thermal emission. The thermal emission is consistent with the presence of an ionized envelope, either static (i.e., trapped in the gravitational radius of an associated massive star) or flowing away (i.e., a photo-evaporative flow). The nature of the non-thermal sources remains unclear and several possibilities are proposed. The possibility that most of these compact radio sources are photo-evaporating objects, and the remaining ones more evolved objects, is consistent with previous studies on UCHII regions.