A JWST, ALMA, and VLA Survey of the Ophiuchus A Star-forming Region: Unveiling Hidden Dust Mass and Connecting Infrared Outflows to Their Radio Origins

Abstract We present an infrared, millimeter, and radio survey of 20 Class 0–III young stellar objects in the Ophiuchus A L1688 star-forming cluster, combining high-resolution (7–25 au) Very Large Array (VLA) and James Webb Space Telescope observations with archival Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array data. We implement physically motivated models to derive dust and ionized gas properties, spectral behaviour, and their relative contributions through the millimeter-to-centimeter radio spectral energy distribution. Our models reveal circumstellar dust disks that are, on average, tens to hundreds of times more massive than millimeter-only estimates (subject to uncertainties arising from the choice of dust opacity) and contain millimeter-sized grains even at the Class 0 stage. Owing to the VLA’s high resolution, we are able to connect outflows to their origins, detecting protostellar jet emission on scales of tens to thousands of au. Our results represent a homogeneous characterization of the dust and ionized gas properties in Ophiuchus and present a potential solution to the long-standing “missing disk mass” problem. However, our understanding is still limited by resolution and sensitivity at frequencies