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Description
We have conducted a survey of 328 protostars in the Orion molecular clouds with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at 0.87mm at a resolution of ~0.1" (40au), including observations with the Very Large Array at 9mm toward 148 protostars at a resolution of ~0.08" (32au). This is the largest multiwavelength survey of protostars at this resolution by an order of magnitude. We use the dust continuum emission at 0.87 and 9mm to measure the dust disk radii and masses toward the Class 0, Class I, and flat-spectrum protostars, characterizing the evolution of these disk properties in the protostellar phase. The mean dust disk radii for the Class 0, Class I, and flat-spectrum protostars are 44.9_-3.4_^+5.8^, 37.0_-3.0_^+4.9^, and 28.5_-2.3_^+3.7^au, respectively, and the mean protostellar dust disk masses are 25.9_-4.0_^+7.7^, 14.9_-2.2_^+3.8^, 11.6_-1.9_^+3.5^M_{Earth}_, respectively. The decrease in dust disk masses is expected from disk evolution and accretion, but the decrease in disk radii may point to the initial conditions of star formation not leading to the systematic growth of disk radii or that radial drift is keeping the dust disk sizes small. At least 146 protostellar disks (35% of 379 detected 0.87mm continuum sources plus 42 nondetections) have disk radii greater than 50au in our sample. These properties are not found to vary significantly between different regions within Orion. The protostellar dust disk mass distributions are systematically larger than those of Class II disks by a factor of >4, providing evidence that the cores of giant planets may need to at least begin their formation during the protostellar phase.
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