news & views

clear how. Local symmetry breaking at
the interface seems to be key, but realistic
calculations of the electronic band structures
at the interface would significantly help to
elucidate the underlying physics. And as
WTe2 has attracted a great deal of attention
as a potential topological material10, it
is possible that some spin textures in
momentum space are involved. Let’s see if
the concept of interfacial symmetry breaking
reported here is transferable to spin–orbit
torque experiments using other groups
of materials.
Hidekazu Kurebayashi is in the London Centre for
Nanotechnology and Department of Electronic and
Electrical Engineering at University College London,
London WC1H 01H, UK.
e-mail: h.kurebayashi@ucl.ac.uk
References
1. MacNeill, D. et al. Nat. Phys. 13, 300–305 (2017).
2. Manchon, A. & Zhang, S. Phys. Rev. B 78, 212405 (2008).
3. Sinova, J., Valenzuela, S. O., Wunderlich, J., Back, C. H. &
Jungwirth, T. Rev. Mod. Phys. 87, 1213 (2015).
❐
4. Ando, K. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 036601 (2008).
5. Liu, L., Lee, O. J., Gudmundsen, T. J., Ralph, D. C. &
Buhrman, R. A. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 096602 (2012).
6. Slonczewski, J. C. J. Magn. Magn. Mater.
159, L1–L7 (1996).
7. Berger, L. Phys. Rev. B 54, 9353 (1996).
8. Hals, K. M. D. & Brataas, A. Phys. Rev. B 88, 085423 (2013).
9. Yu, G. et al. Nat. Nanotech. 9, 548–554 (2014).
10. Soluyanov, A. A. et al. Nature 527, 495–498 (2015).
Published online: 7 November 2016

STAR FORMATION

Cosmic feast
Low-mass stars form through a process known as disk accretion, eating up material that orbits in a disk around
them. It turns out that the same mechanism also describes the formation of more massive stars.

Simone Scaringi

E
ver wondered how stars form? Or
why some stars seem to be so much
bigger than others? These are the very
questions that drive star formation research. Cavity
We know that two or more low-mass stars
can coalesce to form a high-mass star 1 — Outflow
heavier than eight solar masses — but it is
equally plausible that such massive objects Disk
are formed through disk accretion2, the
process by which material in a disk orbiting
Protostar
the star spirals inward to accumulate at the
centre. And now, writing in Nature Physics,
Alessio Caratti o Garatti and colleagues3
report a discovery that identifies disk
Figure 1 | An accretion-induced outburst in a high-mass YSO triggering light-echoes. The formation
accretion as the primary mechanism for star
and growth of low-mass stars is driven by episodic events of enhanced mass transfer through accretion
formation and growth in stars across a wide
disks. Caratti o Garatti et al.3 showed how high-mass star formation can be regarded as a scaled up
mass spectrum.
version of their low-mass analogues. During the quiescent state mass accumulates in the disk, with
Star formation begins with a large
only a small amount being transferred to the protostar (left). The accretion disk undergoes an instability
cloud of gas and dust — remains from the
producing a luminous outburst, allowing disk material to be dumped onto the protostar (middle). The
explosions of previous generations of stars.
light from the outburst event travels to the cavities carved by the outflow where the gas shines due to
As the cloud contracts due to gravitation,
scattering, a phenomenon referred to as a light-echo (right). Background image © Granger Historical
the bound gas and dust particles revolve
Picture Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.
around their common centre of mass.
To conserve angular momentum, the
irregularly shaped cloud becomes a rotating YSO has been shown to consume large the Universe. From planets to supermassive
disk, and when sufficient mass has gathered amounts of matter from a disk. black holes, most objects have at some
at the centre, a protostar is formed. This The observation implies that high-mass point gone through a phase where accretion
newly born young stellar object (YSO) star formation can be regarded as a scaled-up disks have shaped their evolutionary paths.
feeds on material from its accretion disk equivalent of the low-mass mechanism. The The environments under which accretion
until its radiation and magnetic winds difference between the two is that massive takes place are, however, very different.
become strong enough to clear away stars are born from much larger disks, For example, the gravitational potential in
the surroundings. inducing much higher mass-transfer rates the inner-most regions of active galactic
Although the process is well established through the disk and on faster timescales. In nuclei (harbouring supermassive black holes
for low-mass stars, the case for high- fact, the high mass-transfer rate allows for between 104 and 108 solar masses) and YSOs
mass stars has remained unclear. But large amounts of material to be accreted onto can differ by over eight orders of magnitude
Caratti o Garatti et al. observed an the star, circumventing the intense radiation in strength, exposing the disks to intense
accretion-induced outburst and associated pressure from the massive protostar. radiation fields and general relativistic effects.
light-echoes (Fig. 1) from a twenty-solar- Accretion acts on various scales and is In other situations, accretion disks are
mass YSO — the first time such a massive responsible for the growth of most objects in not fed by interstellar dust and gas, but from

210 NATURE PHYSICS | VOL 13 | MARCH 2017 | www.nature.com/naturephysics

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 news & views

material being stripped from a companion
star, deformed by the gravitational potential
of a nearby orbiting compact object, such
as a white dwarf, neutron star, or stellar-
mass black hole. Despite such diverse
environments and systems, growing
observational evidence suggests that
accretion-disk physics can in fact be scaled
across the full mass and size spectrum,
irrespective of the accretor type.
As accretion is an inherently stochastic
process, one way to compare different
accreting source types is to study small-
amplitude light variations. These stochastic
light variations are emitted at different
wavelengths depending on the accretion
disk temperatures. For example, in accreting
stellar-mass black holes the inner-most
disk edges heat up to X-ray-emitting
temperatures, but in YSOs the bulk emission
occurs at infrared and optical wavelengths.
Nonetheless, these accretion-induced light
variations all display some characteristic
variability timescale — related to the sizes
of accretion disks and their mass transfer
rates — linking black holes on all scales with
accreting white dwarfs and YSOs4,5.
The similarities between accreting
systems also include ejection phenomena.
Both supermassive and stellar-mass black
holes are known to launch powerful jets
of radio-emitting plasma6, and similar
phenomenology is also observed in
accreting white dwarfs7 and YSOs8.
Observations gathered over the last decade
therefore seem to indicate that accretion
and ejection are intimately linked, and that
a common mechanism is at play governing
both on all mass and size scales.
Caratti o Garatti et al.3 have now provided
direct evidence that high-mass YSOs could
also be included into this grand scheme of
accretion. It remains to be seen whether
additional phenomenology is observed
between high-mass YSOs and their smaller
YSO analogues, and if this phenomenology
resembles what is observed in their more
compact accreting cousins. We also have yet
to determine whether the most massive stars
we observe also grow through accretion.
Theoretical models set an upper limit of
about 150 solar masses9,10, but many stars are
known to comfortably exceed this, possibly
due to previous mergers of lower-mass
stars11. Future detailed observations similar
to those discussed in Caratti o Garatti et al.3
will thus advance our understanding of
massive star formation, and whether the
physics of accretion can indeed be scaled
and compared across the full mass and
size spectrum. ❐
Simone Scaringi is at the Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics, 85748 Garching, Germany.
e-mail: simo@mpe.mpg.de
References
1. Tan, J. C. et al. in Protostars and Planets VI (eds Beuther, H. et al.)
149–172 (Univ. Arizona Press, 2014).
2. Klassen, M., Pudritz, R. E., Kuiper, R., Peters, T. & Banerjee, R.
Astrophys. J. 823, 28 (2016).
3. Caratti o Garatti, A. et al. Nat. Phys. 13, 276–279 (2017).
4. McHardy, I. M., Koerding, E., Knigge, C., Uttley, P. & Fender, R. P.
Nature 444, 730–732 (2006).
5. Scaringi, S. et al. Science Advances 1, e1500686 (2015).
6. Mirabel, I. F. & Rodríguez, L. F. Nature 371, 46–68 (1994).
7. Körding, E. et al. Science 320, 1318–1320 (2008).
8. Carrasco-González, C. et al. Science 330, 1209–1212 (2010).
9. Figer, D. F. Nature 434, 192–194 (2005).
10. Zinnecker, H. & Yorke, H. W. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys.
45, 481–563 (2007).
11. Banerjee, S., Kroupa, P. & Oh, S. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.
426, 1416–1426 (2012).
Published online: 14 November 2016

NATURE PHYSICS | VOL 13 | MARCH 2017 | www.nature.com/naturephysics 211

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