English

Protostellar discs formed from turbulent cores

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-05-13 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We investigate the collapse and fragmentation of low-mass, trans-sonically turbulent prestellar cores, using SPH simulations. The initial conditions are slightly supercritical Bonnor-Ebert spheres, all with the same density profile, the same mass (M_O=6.1 Msun) and the same radius (R_O=17,000 AU), but having different initial turbulent velocity fields. Four hundred turbulent velocity fields have been generated, all scaled so that the mean Mach number is M=1. Then a subset of these, having a range of net angular momenta, j, has been evolved. The evolution of these turbulent cores is not strongly correlated with j. Instead it is moderated by the formation of filamentary structures due to converging turbulent flows. A high fraction (~ 82%) of the protostars forming from turbulent cores are attended by protostellar accretion discs, but only a very small fraction (~16%) of these discs is sufficiently cool and extended to develop non-linear gravitational instabilities and fragment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0908.2443,
  title  = {Protostellar discs formed from turbulent cores},
  author = {S. Walch and T. Naab and A. Burkert and A. Whitworth and M. Gritschneder},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.2443},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

10 pages, 8 figures, submitted

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:36:15.093Z