Related papers: The Shapes of Molecular Cloud Cores in Simulations…
We investigate the intrinsic shapes of starless cores in the Orion GMC, using the prestellar core sample of Nutter and Ward-Thompson (2007), which is based on submillimeter SCUBA data. We employ a maximum-likelihood method to reconstruct…
In this study we investigate the formation and properties of prestellar and protostellar cores using hydrodynamic, self-gravitating Adaptive Mesh Refinement simulations, comparing the cases where turbulence is continually driven and where…
Molecular clouds are observed to be turbulent, but the origin of this turbulence is not well understood. As a result, there are two different approaches to simulating molecular clouds, one in which the turbulence is allowed to decay after…
(Abridged) We present a series of decaying turbulence simulations that represent a cluster-forming clump within a molecular cloud, investigating the role of magnetic fields on the formation of potential star-forming cores. We present an…
A physical model and two-dimensional numerical method for computing the evolution and spectra of protostellar clouds are described. The physical model is based on a system of magneto-gasdynamical equations, including ohmic and ambipolar…
We review the properties of low mass dense molecular cloud cores, including starless, prestellar, and Class 0 protostellar cores, as derived from observations. In particular we discuss them in the context of the current debate surrounding…
We present a detailed study of the collapse of molecular cloud cores using high resolution 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations. In this first in a series of investigations our initial conditions consists of spherical…
We use numerical simulations of molecular cloud formation in the colliding flow scenario to investigate the reliability of observational estimates of the angular momenta of early-state, low-mass protostellar cores. We show that, with…
We conduct an analysis of the shapes of molecular cloud cores using recently compiled catalogs of observed axis ratios of individual cores mapped in ammonia or through optical selection. We apply both analytical and statistical techniques…
We present measurements of the mean dense core lifetimes in numerical simulations of magnetically supercritical, turbulent, isothermal molecular clouds, in order to compare with observational determinations. "Prestellar" lifetimes (given as…
We examine the conditions under which binary and multiple stars may form out of turbulent molecular cloud cores using high resolution 3-D, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamics (Truelove et al., 1997, 1998; Klein, 1999). We argue…
The nature of turbulence in molecular clouds is one of the key parameters that control star formation efficiency: compressive motions, as opposed to solenoidal motions, can trigger the collapse of cores, or mark the expansion of Hii…
We utilize the more than 100 gravitationally-bound dense cores formed in our three-dimensional, turbulent MHD simulations reported in Chen & Ostriker (2015) to analyze structural, kinematic, and magnetic properties of prestellar cores. Our…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of star formation is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. We review the properties of low-mass dense…
A fundamental issue in star formation is understanding the precise mechanisms leading to the formation of prestellar cores, and their subsequent gravitationally unstable evolution. To address this question, we carefully construct a suite of…
We test the hypothesis that the starless cores may be gravitationally bound clouds supported largely by thermal pressure by comparing observed molecular line spectra to theoretical spectra produced by a simulation that includes…
The configuration and evolution of the magnetic field in star-forming cores are investigated in order to directly compare simulations and observations. We prepare four different initial clouds having different magnetic field strengths and…
We formulate the problem of the formation and collapse of nonaxisymmetric protostellar cores in weakly ionized, self-gravitating, magnetic molecular clouds. In our formulation, molecular clouds are approximated as isothermal, thin (but with…
Following an approach initially outlined by McKee & Holliman, we investigate the structure and stability of dense, starless molecular cloud cores. We model those as spherical clouds in hydrostatic equilibrium and supported against gravity…
Turbulence and magnetic fields are expected to be important for regulating molecular cloud formation and evolution. However, their effects on subparsec to 100 parsec scales, leading to the formation of starless cores, is not well…