Broadband observations at 3mm: The role of the environment on star- and disk-formation

The star- and disk-formation process involves balancing gravity, turbulence, and magnetic fields. Turbulence and magnetic fields attempt to slow down the gravitational collapse. Thanks to high-angular resolution interferometric observations, much progress has been made in studying the disk properties. Unfortunately, little progress has been made in understanding the role of the environment in the formation and evolution of star- and disks. I present NOMEA observations at 3mm. Thanks to the instantaneous 16 GHz bandwidth, we carry out different goals simultaneously. I will show the results of three different aspects enabled by these observations: (1) the first systematic estimate of the number of streamers on embedded protostars, (2) the first large-scale cosmic ray ionization rate and electron fraction maps, and (3) a determination of the power spectrum of turbulence over more than 2-orders of magnitude for ions and neutrals down to the ambipolar diffusion scale. These results show that (1) the delivery of mass down to disk scales is highly asymmetric, with streamers playing an important role, (2) clear evidence for locally generated cosmic rays which will affect the coupling between magnetic fields and gas, and (3) we show a clear power-law behavior down to mpc scales but without evidence for the ambipolar diffusion scale. These results show the power of broadband observations to explore the role of the environment in star- and disk-formation, which will be enabled by WSU.