English

Can magnetized turbulence set the mass scale of stars?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-10-27 v4

Abstract

Understanding the evolution of self-gravitating, isothermal, magnetized gas is crucial for star formation, as these physical processes have been postulated to set the initial mass function (IMF). We present a suite of isothermal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations using the GIZMO code, that resolve the formation of individual stars in giant molecular clouds (GMCs), spanning a range of Mach numbers found in observed GMCs. As in past works, the mean and median stellar masses are sensitive to numerical resolution, because they are sensitive to low-mass stars that contribute a vanishing fraction of the overall stellar mass. The {\em mass-weighted} median stellar mass M50M_\mathrm{50} becomes insensitive to resolution once turbulent fragmentation is well-resolved. Without imposing Larson-like scaling laws, our simulations find M50M0M3αturbSFE1/3M_\mathrm{50} \propto M_\mathrm{0} \mathcal{M}^{-3} \alpha_\mathrm{turb} \mathrm{SFE}^{1/3} for GMC mass M0M_\mathrm{0}, sonic Mach number M\mathcal{M}, virial parameter αturb\alpha_\mathrm{turb}, and star formation efficiency SFE=M/M0\mathrm{SFE}=M_\mathrm{\star}/M_\mathrm{0}. This fit agrees well with previous IMF results from the RAMSES, ORION2, and SphNG codes. Although M50M_\mathrm{50} has no significant dependence on the magnetic field strength at the cloud scale, MHD is necessary to prevent a fragmentation cascade that results in non-convergent stellar masses. For initial conditions and SFE similar to star-forming GMCs in our Galaxy, we predict M50M_\mathrm{50} to be >20M>20 M_{\odot}, an order of magnitude larger than observed (2M\sim 2 M_\odot), together with an excess of brown dwarfs. Moreover, M50M_\mathrm{50} is sensitive to initial cloud properties and evolves strongly in time within a given cloud, predicting much larger IMF variations than are observationally allowed. We conclude that physics beyond MHD turbulence and gravity are necessary ingredients for the IMF.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.01421,
  title  = {Can magnetized turbulence set the mass scale of stars?},
  author = {David Guszejnov and Michael Y. Grudić and Philip F. Hopkins and Stella S. R. Offner and Claude-André Faucher-Giguère},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.01421},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Note that this version has erratum at the end (does not affect results) 18 pages, 17 figures