Related papers: Tracing Turbulent Ambipolar Diffusion in Molecular…
It is believed that turbulence may have a significant impact on star formation and the dynamics and evolution of the molecular clouds in which this occurs. It is also known that non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic effects influence the nature of…
Ambipolar diffusion is important in redistributing magnetic flux and in damping Alfven waves in molecular clouds. The importance of ambipolar diffusion on a length scale $\ell$ is governed by the ambipolar diffusion Reynolds number,…
The diffusion of astrophysical magnetic fields in conducting fluids in the presence of turbulence depends on whether magnetic fields can change their topology via reconnection in highly conducting media. Recent progress in understanding…
The Herschel Gould Belt Survey showed that stars form in dense filaments in nearby molecular clouds. Recent studies suggest that massive filaments are bound by the slow shocks caused by accretion flows onto the filaments. The slow shock is…
We simulate fragmentation and gravitational collapse of cold, magnetized molecular clouds. We explore the nonlinear development of an instability mediated by ambipolar diffusion, in which the collapse rate is intermediate to fast…
The magnetic field strength in molecular clouds is a fundamental quantity for theories of star formation. It is estimated by Zeeman splitting measurements in a few dense molecular cores, but its volume--averaged value within large molecular…
We investigate numerically the combined effects of supersonic turbulence, strong magnetic fields and ambipolar diffusion on cloud evolution leading to star formation. We find that, in clouds that are initially magnetically subcritical,…
We expand our study on the dispersion of polarization angles in molecular clouds. We show how the effect of signal integration through the thickness of the cloud as well as across the area subtended by the telescope beam inherent to dust…
Recent observational evidence that magnetic fields are dynamically important in molecular clouds, compared to self-gravity and turbulence, is reviewed and illustrated with data from the NGC 2024 region. One piece of evidence, turbulence…
Emission in spectral lines can provide unique information on interstellar turbulence. Doppler shifts due to supersonic motions contain information on turbulent velocity field which is otherwise difficult to measure. However, the problem of…
We study the linear evolution of small perturbations in self-gravitating fluid systems with magnetic fields. We consider wave-like perturbations to nonuniform filamentary and sheet-like hydrostatic equilibria in the presence of a uniform…
We numerically reproduce the density profiles for filaments that are in magnetohydrostatic and pressure equilibrium with their surroundings obtained in Tomisaka (2014) and show that these equilibria are dynamically stable. If the effect of…
In this paper we reconsider the problem of magnetic field diffusion in neutron star cores. We model the star as consisting of a mixture of neutrons, protons and electrons, and allow for particle reactions and binary collisions between…
Recent observational results for magnetic fields in molecular clouds reviewed by Crutcher (2012) seem to be inconsistent with the predictions of the ambipolar diffusion theory of star formation. These include the measured decrease in mass…
We present a comprehensive study of MHD waves and instabilities in a weakly ionised system, e.g., an interstellar molecular cloud. We determine all the critical wavelengths of perturbations across which the sustainable wave modes can change…
Under the basic assumption that the observed turbulent motions in molecular clouds are Alfvenic waves or turbulence, we emphasize that the Doppler broadening of molecular line profiles directly measures the velocity amplitudes of the waves…
We follow the ambipolar-diffusion--driven formation and evolution of a fragment in a magnetically supported molecular cloud, until a hydrostatic protostellar core forms at its center. This problem was formulated in Paper I. We determine the…
Previous treatments of ambipolar diffusion in star-forming molecular clouds do not consider the effects of fluctuations in the fluid fields about their mean values. This paper generalizes the ambipolar diffusion problem in molecular cloud…
In the cold neutral medium, high out-of-equilibrium temperatures are created by intermittent dissipation processes, including shocks, viscous heating, and ambipolar diffusion. The high-temperature excursions are thought to explain the…
The diffusion of astrophysical magnetic fields in conducting fluids in the presence of turbulence depends on whether magnetic fields can change their topology or reconnect in highly conducting media. Recent progress in understanding fast…