The dominant mechanism forming multiple stellar systems in the high-mass regime (M_* ≳ 8 M_⊙) remained unknown because direct imaging of multiple protostellar systems at early phases of high-mass star formation is very challenging. High-mass stars are expected to form in clustered environments containing binaries and higher-order multiplicity systems. So far only a few high-mass protobinary systems, and no definitive higher-order multiples, have been detected. Here we report the discovery of one quintuple, one quadruple, one triple and four binary protostellar systems simultaneously forming in a single high-mass protocluster, G333.23–0.06, using Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array high-resolution observations. We present a new example of a group of gravitationally bound binary and higher-order multiples during their early formation phases in a protocluster. This provides the clearest direct measurement of the initial configuration of primordial high-order multiple systems, with implications for the in situ multiplicity and its origin. We find that the binary and higher-order multiple systems, and their parent cores, show no obvious sign of disk-like kinematic structure. We conclude that the observed fragmentation into binary and higher-order multiple systems can be explained by core fragmentation, indicating its crucial role in establishing the multiplicity during high-mass star cluster formation.

在大质量状态（M _*  ≳  8  M _⊙）中形成多恒星系统的主导机制仍然未知，因为在大质量恒星形成的早期阶段直接成像多原恒星系统非常具有挑战性。大质量恒星预计会在包含双星和高阶多重系统的星团环境中形成。到目前为止，只检测到了一些高质量的原双星系统，并且没有确定的高阶倍数系统。在这里，我们报告利用阿塔卡马大型毫米/亚毫米阵列高分辨率观测，发现了在单个高质量原星团 G333.23-0.06 中同时形成的一个五重、一个四重、一个三重和四个二元原恒星系统。我们提出了一个新的例子，展示了原星团中早期形成阶段的一组受引力束缚的二元和高阶多次波。这为原始高阶多重系统的初始配置提供了最清晰的直接测量，并对原位多重性及其起源产生了影响。我们发现二元和高阶多重系统及其父核没有表现出明显的盘状运动结构迹象。我们得出的结论是，观察到的二元和高阶多重系统的碎裂可以用核心碎裂来解释，这表明它在高质量星团形成过程中建立多重性方面发挥着至关重要的作用。