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The dominance of turbulence over magnetism in the formation of massive star cluster seeds

Nature Astronomy (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

High-mass stars form in protoclusters, where gravo-magnetic processes elongate collapsing clouds and clumps preferentially perpendicular to magnetic (B) fields. Yet it remains unclear whether gravo-magnetic processes still govern the formation of 0.01-pc-scale condensations in massive star-forming protoclusters, which are crucial for understanding the stellar initial mass function and multiplicity. Here we report on statistical evidence that the condensation elongations are preferentially aligned with local B fields, based on dust polarization observations towards 30 massive star-forming regions with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Our clustered massive star formation simulations reveal that this more parallel alignment is exclusively observed in models where the initial turbulence dominates the B fields. By contrast, models in which the initial B fields dominate the turbulence distinctly exhibit a more perpendicular alignment. The comparison between observations and simulations indicates that turbulence could play a more important role than B fields in the formation of condensations in the context of clustered massive star formation. Moreover, we find a possibly turbulence-induced preferential misalignment between the B field and rotation axis of condensations, which may potentially reduce the magnetic braking efficiency and facilitate massive disk formation. Our findings indicate that turbulence could be more critical than previously thought in determining the initial stellar properties.

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Fig. 1: Properties of observed massive protocluster systems.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 2: Properties of simulated massive protocluster systems.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 3: CDF of condensation–B alignment.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 4: B-rotation alignment from observations.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 5: B-rotation alignment from simulations.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

Data availability

This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2017.1.00101.S and ADS/JAO.ALMA#2018.1.00105.S. The data are available at https://almascience.nao.ac.jp/aq by setting the observation code. The reduced ALMA data and the simulation data used for this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The reduced ALMA images will be publicly released in the future as part of the MagMaR programme. The catalogue of condensation parameters in the ALMA dust continuum maps, the POLARIS output synthetic images and an example of the RAMSES output are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19062258 (ref. 63).

Code availability

The ALMA data were reduced using CASA version 6.5.5-21, which is available at https://casa.nrao.edu/casa_obtaining.shtml. The source identification package of astrodendro is available at http://dendrograms.org/. The source identification package of getsf is available at https://irfu.cea.fr/Pisp/alexander.menshchikov/. This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy64, and Matplotlib, a Python 2D plotting library for Python65.

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Acknowledgements

J.L. thanks A. Maury for her constructive comments on this work. J.L. thanks P. Shing Li, K. Tatematsu and H.-B. Li for helpful discussions. J.L. was partially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (KAKENHI Nos. JP23H01221 and JP25K17445). P. Sanhuesa was partially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI Nos. JP22H01271 and JP23H01221). P. Saha was partially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the JSPS (KAKENHI Nos. JP22H01271 and JP24K17100). J.M.G. acknowledges support from Grant No. PID2020-117710GB-I00 (MCI-AEI-FEDER, UE). This work was also partly supported by the Spanish programme Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu (No. CEX2020-001058-M), financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and by a MaX-CSIC Excellence Award (No. MaX4-SOMMA-ICE). X.L. acknowledges support from the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 23ZR1482100), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB0800300), the National SKA Program of China (Grant No. 2025SKA0140100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12273090 and 12322305) and the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFA1603101). K.Q. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12425304 and U1731237) and the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant Nos. 2023YFA1608204 and 2022YFA1603100). S.L. acknowledges support from the National SKA Program of China (Grant No. 2025SKA0140100), Double First-Class Funding (Grant No. 14912217) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 13004007). M.T.B. and C.-Y.L acknowledge financial support through the INAF Large Grant ‘The role of magnetic fields in massive star formation’ (MAGMA). Y.C. was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the JSPS (KAKENHI Grant No. JP24K17103). B.C. acknowledges support from the Action Thématique Physique Stellaire of CNRS/INSU PN ASTRO co-funded by CEA and CNES. E.J.C. acknowledges support from a Core Research Grant (Sanction Order No. CRG/2023/008710) awarded by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation under the Science and Engineering Research Board, Government of India. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2017.1.00101.S and ADS/JAO.ALMA#2018.1.00105.S. ALMA is a partnership of the ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The data analysis was in part carried out on the Multi-wavelength Data Analysis System operated by the Astronomy Data Center, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Junhao Liu  (刘峻豪), Keping Qiu & Shanghuo Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Junhao Liu  (刘峻豪), Keping Qiu & Shanghuo Li

  3. National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Tokyo, Japan

    Junhao Liu  (刘峻豪), Piyali Saha, Fumitaka Nakamura, Fernando A. Olguin & Yu Cheng

  4. Department of Astronomy, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Patricio Sanhueza, Kaho Morii & Qiuyi Luo

  5. Academia Sinica, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taipei, Taiwan

    Piyali Saha & Patrick M. Koch

  6. Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Kaho Morii & Qizhou Zhang

  7. Institut de Ciencies de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Josep Miquel Girart

  8. Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), Barcelona, Spain

    Josep Miquel Girart

  9. Joint ALMA Observatory, Vitacura, Chile

    Paulo C. Cortés

  10. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Paulo C. Cortés

  11. Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Valeska Valdivia

  12. Liant, Bédarieux, France

    Valeska Valdivia

  13. ENS de Lyon, CRAL UMR5574, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Lyon, France

    Benoît Commerçon

  14. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London, UK

    Kate Pattle & Janik Karoly

  15. Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Xing Lu & Wenyu Jiao

  16. State Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Technology, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Xing Lu

  17. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía (CCT- La Plata, CONICET, CICPBA, UNLP), Villa Elisa, Argentina

    Manuel Fernández-López

  18. Department of Earth, Environment, and Physics, Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA

    Ian W. Stephens

  19. Institute of Astronomy and Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Huei-Ru Vivien Chen

  20. INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Florence, Italy

    Chi-Yan Law & Maria T. Beltrán

  21. Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

    Henrik Beuther

  22. Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Eun Jung Chung, Spandan Choudhury, Ji-hyun Kang & A-Ran Lyo

  23. East Asian Observatory, Hilo, HI, USA

    Jia-Wei Wang

  24. Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Fernando A. Olguin

  25. Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Jihye Hwang

  26. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty of Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Jihye Hwang

  27. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati, Yerpedu, Tirupati, India

    Sandhyarani Panigrahy

  28. Department of Physical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, India

    Chakali Eswaraiah

  29. Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Morelia, Mexico

    Luis A. Zapata

Authors
  1. Junhao Liu  (刘峻豪)
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  2. Patricio Sanhueza
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  3. Piyali Saha
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  4. Kaho Morii
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  5. Josep Miquel Girart
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  6. Qizhou Zhang
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  7. Fumitaka Nakamura
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  8. Paulo C. Cortés
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  9. Valeska Valdivia
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  10. Benoît Commerçon
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  11. Patrick M. Koch
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  12. Kate Pattle
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  13. Xing Lu
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  14. Janik Karoly
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  15. Manuel Fernández-López
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  18. Chi-Yan Law
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  19. Keping Qiu
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  20. Shanghuo Li
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  21. Henrik Beuther
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  22. Eun Jung Chung
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  23. Jia-Wei Wang
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  24. Fernando A. Olguin
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  25. Yu Cheng
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  30. Qiuyi Luo
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  31. Spandan Choudhury
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  32. Ji-hyun Kang
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  33. Wenyu Jiao
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  34. Luis A. Zapata
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  35. A-Ran Lyo
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Contributions

J.L. led the simulations, data analysis, interpretation of results and paper writing. P. Sanhueza led the ALMA proposal. P. Saha and P. Sanhueza contributed to the ALMA data imaging. P.C.C. and J.M.G. assisted with the ALMA data imaging. K.M. contributed to the dendrogram analysis of ALMA data. S.C. and J.K. contributed to the hot molecular core identification. B.C. contributed to the RAMSES simulations. V.V. assisted with the POLARIS simulations. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junhao Liu  (刘峻豪).

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Astronomy thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended Data Fig. 1 Dust intensity structures of observed massive protoclusters.

Examples of ALMA 1.3 mm dust continuum maps. The blue ellipses indicate the condensations identified with the FWHM along the major and minor axes and the position angle, as reported by astrodendro (left) and getsf (right). The black lines indicate the average B field orientation of each condensation. In the left panel, the red contours indicate the mask of the condensations identified by astrodendro. The synthetic beam is shown as a white ellipse in the lower left corner of each panel. A scale bar is shown in the lower right corner of each panel.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Dust intensity structures of simulated massive protoclusters.

Examples of synthetic 1.3 mm dust continuum maps (T10M6MU2). The blue ellipses indicate the condensations identified by astrodendro (left) and getsf (right). The black lines indicate the average B field orientation of each condensation. In the left panel, the red contours indicate the mask of the condensations identified by astrodendro. The synthetic beam is shown as a white ellipse in the lower left corner of each panel. A scale bar is shown in the lower right corner of each panel. The initial median Alfvénic Mach number MA,med (Supplementary Table 2) of the model is shown in the upper right corner of each panel.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–6, Discussion and Tables 1 and 2.

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Liu, J., Sanhueza, P., Saha, P. et al. The dominance of turbulence over magnetism in the formation of massive star cluster seeds. Nat Astron (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02873-y

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