Discs of gas and dust are ubiquitous around protostars. Hypothetical viscous interactions within the disc are thought to cause the gas and dust to accrete onto the star. Turbulence within the disc is theorised to be the source of this disc viscosity. However, observed protostellar disc turbulence often appears to be small and not always conducive to disc accretion. In addition, theories for disc and planet evolution have difficulty in explaining the observed disc rings/gaps which form much earlier than expected.

Protostellar accretion discs are observed to contain significant quantities of dust and pebbles. Observations also show that some of this material is ejected from near the protostar, where it travels to the outer regions of the disc. Such solid infalling material has a relatively small amount of angular momentum compared to the material in the disc. This infalling material lowers the angular momentum of the disc and should drive a radial flow towards the protostar.

We show that the local radial accretion speed of the disc is proportional to the mass rate of infalling material onto the disc. Higher rates of infall onto the disc implies higher radial accretion disc speeds. As such, regions with high rates of infall of gas, dust, and pebbles onto the disc will produce gaps on relatively short timescales in the disc, while regions associated with relative low rates of infalling material will produce disc rings. As such, the inner edge of a disc gap will tend to have a higher surface density, which may enhance the probability of planet formation. In addition, the outer edge of a disc gap will act as a dust trap and may also become a site for planet formation.

For the early Solar System, such a process may have collected O$^{16}$-poor forsterite dust from the inner regions of the protosolar disc and O$^{16}$-rich CAIs and AOAs from the inner edge regions of the protosolar disc, thereby constructing a region favourable to the formation of pre-chondritic planetesimals.

The discovery of abundant carbon-chain molecules in protostellar cores motivates the development of the warm carbon-chain chemistry. To understand the role of warm carbon-chain chemistry in star-forming regions, we studied C2H and c-C3H2 in 15 embedded protostars in the Taurus molecular cloud, whose evolutionary stages range from prestellar to Class I/II, using data from the Submillimeter Telescope (SMT). We calculated the excitation temperature, column density, and abundance of C2H and c-C3H2 in each source. We compared those properties with evolutionary indicators of the protostars. We also estimated the kinetic temperature using RADEX. Finally, we compared the abundance of C2H and c-C3H2 in our survey with that in the survey of protostellar cores in the Perseus molecular cloud. While we are unable to identify new WCCCs, our results suggest that the abundances of C2H and c-C3H2 could be an indicator to find WCCC candidates.

We discuss the first detection of deuterated water (HDO) in extragalactic hot cores. The HDO 211–212 line has been detected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward hot cores N 105–2 A and 2 B in the N 105 star-forming region in the low-metallicity Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the nearest star-forming galaxy. We compared the HDO line luminosity (LHDO) measured toward two hot cores in N 105 to those observed toward a sample of 17 Galactic hot cores and found that the observed values of LHDO for the LMC hot cores fit very well into the LHDO trends with Lbol and metallicity observed toward the Galactic hot cores. Our results indicate that LHDO seems to be largely dependent on the source luminosity, but metallicity also plays a role. We provide a rough estimate of the H2O column density and abundance ranges toward N 105–2 A and 2 B by assuming that HDO/H2O toward the LMC hot cores is the same as that observed in the Milky Way; the obtained values are systematically lower than those measured in the Galactic hot cores. The spatial distribution and velocity structure of the HDO emission in N 105–2 A is consistent with HDO being the product of the low-temperature dust grain chemistry.

We present spatially resolved molecular filaments and clumps in the high-mass star-forming regions N159E-Papillon, W-South, and W-North in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Our ALMA observations in CO isotopes and millimeter continuum revealed remarkable hub-filament systems with a typical width of 0.1 pc. The most massive clump in the observed regions, N159W-North MMS-2, shows an especially massive/dense nature whose total H2 mass and peak column density are ∼104 M⊙ and ∼1024 cm−2, respectively, and harbors massive (∼100 M⊙) starless core candidates. The hub-filamentary clouds in the three regions share a common orientation and have 10–30 pc scale head-tail structures with active star formation at the tips. Their striking similarity proposes a “teardrops-inflow” model, i.e., substructured conversing H i flow, that explains the synchronized, extreme star formation across ∼50 pc, including one of the most massive protocluster clumps in the Local Group.

We introduce hydrodynamic simulations in which a protostar captures a cloudlet with a relatively small angular momentum. The cloudlet accretes onto the protostar and perturbs the gas disk rotating around the protostar. This cloudlet capture can reproduce some features observed in the molecular emission lines from TMC-1A. First, the cloudlet can reproduce the blue asymmetry observed in the CS emission. Second, the cloudlet can explain the slow infall observed in the C18O emission. Third, the impact of the cloudlet can explain the offset of the SO emission from the disk center. We also argue that a warm gas should confine the cloudlet through pressure. A protostar may obtain substantial mass by capturing cloudlets.

Nitrogen, one of the most abundant elements in the Universe is a fundamental element of molecules which are crucial for life. We present here the modelling of the emission of two of the simplest nitrogen-bearing molecules, CN and NO, with a non-LTE radiative transfer code in IRAS16293-2422, a class 0 low-mass protostar. In this model, we assumed IRAS16293-2422 is formed by 2 compact, hot and dense sources embedded in a three layers of envelope.

Isocyanic acid (HNCO) is a simple molecule containing the four main atoms essential for life and can be considered as a prebiotic molecule. To model the HNCO emission in the IRAS16293-2422 class 0 low-mass protostar, we used a new set of HNCO collisional coefficients with ortho-H2 and para-H2, computed from a set of rotational excitation quenching rates between HNCO and H2 based on a novel potential energy surface for the rigid molecules interactions. We present here the HNCO Potential Energy Surface used to compute this new set of collisional coefficients and the result of the IRAS16293-2422 HNCO spectrum modelling using them.

Observations of deuterated species are essential to probing the properties and thermal history of various astrophysical environments, and the ALMA observing facilities will reveal a multitude of new deuterated molecules. To analyze these new vast data we have constructed a new up-to-date network with the largest collection of deuterium chemistry reactions to date. We assess the reliability of the network and probe the role of physical parameters and initial abundances on the chemical evolution of deuterated species. Finally, we perform a sensitivity study to assess the uncertainties in the estimated abundances and D/H ratios.