Related papers: Does a prestellar core always become protostellar?…
Motivated by recent observational searches of sub-structure in starless molecular cloud cores, we investigate the evolution of density perturbations on scales smaller than the Jeans length embedded in contracting isothermal clouds, adopting…
The evolution of collapsing metal free protostellar clouds is investigated for various masses and initial conditions. We perform hydrodynamical calculations for spherically symmetric clouds taking account of radiative transfer of the…
Star formation occurs within dense regions of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), however, exactly how gas collects and evolves to form individual stars and what role dense cores play remains unclear. We use the Lagrangian cell information in…
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…
To constrain the nature of the very first stars, we investigate the collapse and fragmentation of primordial, metal-free gas clouds. We explore the physics of primordial star formation by means of three-dimensional simulations of the dark…
We study the gravitationally-dominated, accretion-driven evolution of a prestellar core. In our model, as the core's density increases, it remains immersed in a constant-density environment and so it accretes from this environment,…
A sample of 1.3 mm continuum cores in the Dragon infrared dark cloud (also known as G28.37+0.07 or G28.34+0.06) is analyzed statistically. Based on their association with molecular outflows, the sample is divided into protostellar and…
Studies of the evolution of massive protostars and the evolution of their host molecular cloud cores are commonly treated as separate problems. However, interdependencies between the two can be significant. Here, we study the simultaneous…
The collapse of dense cores with different metallicities is studied by hydrodynamical calculations coupled with detailed chemical and radiative processes. For this purpose, we construct a simple chemical network with non-equilibrium…
The isothermal dynamical evolution of a clumpy and turbulent molecular cloud region and its fragmentation into a protostellar cluster is investigated numerically. The effect of different initial density and velocity distributions, generated…
We present numerical simulations of the evolution of low-mass, isothermal, molecular cores which are subjected to an increase in external pressure $P\xt$. If $P\xt$ increases very slowly, the core approaches instability quite…
We investigate the thermal and dynamical evolution of primordial gas clouds in the universe after decoupling. Comparing the time-scale of dynamical evolution with that of fragmentation, we can estimate the typical fragmentation scale. We…
Even today in our Galaxy, stars form from gas cores in a variety of environments, which may affect the properties of resulting star and planetary systems. Here we study the role of pressure, parameterized via ambient clump mass surface…
Stars form from the gravitational collapse of dense molecular cloud cores. In the protostellar phase, mass accretes from the core onto a protostar, likely through an accretion disk, and it is during this phase that the initial masses of…
Disc fragmentation provides an important mechanism for producing low mass stars in prestellar cores. Here, we describe Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations which show how populations of prestellar cores evolve into stars. We find the…
A fraction of the dense cores within a turbulent molecular cloud will eventually collapse to form stars. Identifying the physical criteria for instability and analyzing critical core properties is therefore necessary to star formation…
Low-mass dense cores represent the state of molecular gas associated with the earliest phases of low-mass star formation. Such cores are called "protostellar" or "starless," depending on whether they do or do not contain compact sources of…
The connection between dense gas cores and their infant protostars is key to understanding how stars form in molecular clouds. In this paper we investigate the properties, persistence, and protostellar content of cores that would be…
We investigate the chemical evolution of a collapsing core that starts from a hydrostatic core and finally form a low-mass protostar. New multiphase gas-grain models that include bulk diffusion and photon penetration are simulated by the…
We investigate the molecular evolution and D/H abundance ratios that develop as star formation proceeds from a dense-cloud core to a protostellar core, by solving a gas-grain reaction network applied to a 1-D radiative hydrodynamic model…