Related papers: Resolving the Luminosity Problem in Low-Mass Star …
A long-standing problem in low-mass star formation is the "luminosity problem," whereby protostars are underluminous compared to the accretion luminosity expected both from theoretical collapse calculations and arguments based on the…
We investigate the role of mass infall in the formation and evolution of protostars. To avoid ad hoc initial and boundary conditions, we consider the infall resulting self-consistently from modeling the formation of stellar clusters in…
We study the formation and long-term evolution of primordial protostellar disks harbored by first stars using numerical hydrodynamics simulations in the thin-disk limit. The initial conditions are specified by pre-stellar cores with…
We simulate the early stages of the evolution of turbulent, virialized, high-mass protostellar cores, with primary attention to how cores fragment, and whether they form a small or large number of protostars. Our simulations use the Orion…
The rates at which mass accumulates into protostellar cores can now be predicted in numerical simulations. Our purpose here is to develop methods to compare the statistical properties of the predicted protostars with the observable…
We present an evolutionary picture of a forming star. We assume a singular, isothermal sphere as the initial state of the core that undergoes collapse as described by \citet{shu77}. We include the evolution of a first hydrostatic core at…
Context: Understanding how protostars accrete their mass is a central question of star formation. One aspect of this is trying to understand whether the time evolution of accretion rates in deeply embedded objects is best characterised by a…
The idea that non steady accretion during the embedded phase of protostar evolution can produce the observed luminosity spread in the Herzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD) of young clusters has recently been called into question. Observations of…
The protostellar luminosity function (PLF) is the present-day luminosity function of the protostars in a region of star formation. It is determined using the protostellar mass function (PMF) in combination with a stellar evolutionary model…
Accretion onto protostars may occur in sharp bursts. Accretion bursts during the embedded phase of young protostars are probably most intense, but can only be inferred indirectly through long-wavelength observations. We perform radiative…
Aims: Accretion rates in low-mass protostars can be highly variable in time. Each accretion burst is accompanied by a temporary increase in luminosity, heating up the circumstellar envelope and altering the chemical composition of the gas…
Evidence abounds that young stellar objects undergo luminous bursts of intense accretion that are short compared to the time it takes to form a star. It remains unclear how much these events contribute to the main-sequence masses of the…
The luminosities of protostars provide one of the only indirect methods of measuring their masses and mass accretion rates in their earliest stages of evolution. Accurate measurements of protostellar luminosities traditionally requires…
Low-mass protostars are less luminous than expected. This luminosity problem is important because the observations appear to be inconsistent with some of the basic premises of star formation theory. Two possible solutions are that stars…
We present a preliminary view of the protostellar mass-luminosity relation using current samples of protostars with dynamical mass estimates. To provide a lower limit to the expected luminosities, we adopt an empirical estimate for the…
We have performed fully 3D simulations of the collapse of molecular cloud cores which obey the logatropic equation of state. By following the collapse of these cores from states of near hydrodynamic equilibrium, we are able to produce…
Star formation begins with the gravitational collapse of a dense core inside a molecular cloud. As the collapse progresses, the centre of the core begins to heat up as it becomes optically thick. The temperature and density in the centre…
We present the latest development of the disk gravitational instability and fragmentation model, originally introduced by us to explain episodic accretion bursts in the early stages of star formation. Using our numerical hydrodynamics model…
The accretion histories of embedded protostars are an integral part of descriptions of their physical and chemical evolution. In particular, are the accretion rates smoothly declining from the earlier toward later stages or in fact…
Protostellar feedback, both radiation and bipolar outflows, dramatically affects the fragmentation and mass accretion from star-forming cores. We use ORION, an adaptive mesh refinement gravito-radiation-hydrodynamics code, to simulate the…