Related papers: The Equilibrium Structure of Prolate Magnetized Mo…
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…
Molecular-line observations of star-forming cloud cores indicate that they are not the flattened structures traditionally considered by theory. Rather, they are elongated, perhaps in the direction of their internal magnetic field. We are…
We present the results of a large suite of three-dimensional (3D) models of the collapse of magnetic molecular cloud cores using the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code Enzo2.2 in the ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) approximation. The…
We develop a formalism wherein the solution of the equations of equilibrium for a self-gravitating, magnetized interstellar cloud may be accomplished analytically, under the only hypotheses that (a) the cloud is scale-free, and (b) is…
The collapse and fragmentation of initially prolate and oblate, magnetic molecular clouds is calculated in three dimensions with a gravitational, radiative hydrodynamics code. The code includes magnetic field effects in an approximate…
We report the existence of hydrostatic equilibrium states for a composite body made of two rigidly rotating, homogeneous layers bounded by spheroidal surfaces, where the core has a prolate shape. These new configurations require an oblate…
We present a new model of molecular cloud cores that originate from filamentary clouds that are threaded by helical magnetic fields. Only modest toroidal fields are required to produce elongated cores, with intrinsic axis ratios in the…
A model of magnetic field structure is presented to help test the prevalence of flux freezing in star-forming clouds of various shapes, orientations, and degrees of central concentration, and to estimate their magnetic field strength. The…
We have considered the thermal equilibrium in pre-protostellar cores in the approximation where the dust temperature is independent of interactions with the gas and where the gas is heated both by collisions with dust grains and ionization…
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 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…
Molecular clouds are sites of star formation. Magnetic fields are believed to play an important role in their dynamics and shaping morphology. We aim to study any possible correlation that might exist between the magnetic fields orientation…
In giant molecular clouds (GMCs), shocks driven by converging turbulent flows create high-density, strongly-magnetized regions that are locally sheetlike. In previous work, we showed that within these layers, dense filaments and embedded…
We study numerically the collapse of rotating, magnetized molecular cloud cores, focusing on rotation and magnetic braking during the main accretion phase of isolated star formation. Motivated by previous numerical work and analytic…
We extend our earlier work on ambipolar diffusion induced formation of protostellar cores in isothermal sheet-like magnetic interstellar clouds, by studying nonaxisymmetric collapse for the physically interesting regime of magnetically…
Using recent dust continuum data, we generate the intrinsic ellipticity distribution of dense, starless molecular cloud cores. Under the hypothesis that the cores are all either oblate or prolate randomly-oriented spheroids, we show that a…
We show that a rigidly rotating, homogeneous ellipsoid of revolution threaded by a uniform, coaxial magnetic field is a possible figure of equilibrium. While the spheroidal shape is fully preserved, the rotation rate is modified.…
Observations of magnetic field strengths imply that molecular cloud fragments are individually close to being in a magnetically critical state, even though both magnetic field and column density measurements range over two orders of…
We obtain self-similar solutions that describe the gravitational collapse of nonrotating, isothermal, magnetic molecular cloud cores. We use simplifying assumptions but explicitly include the induction equation, and the semianalytic…
Collapse of the rotating magnetized molecular cloud core is studied with the axisymmetric magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations. Due to the change of the equation of state of the interstellar gas, the molecular cloud cores experience…