Related papers: Hierarchical gravitational fragmentation. I. Colla…
(Abridged) We present numerical hydrodynamical simulations of the formation, evolution and gravitational collapse of isothermal molecular cloud cores. A compressive wave is set up in a constant sub-Jeans density distribution of radius r = 1…
The gravitational collapse of a spherical cloud core is investigated by numerical calculations. The initial conditions of the core lie close to the critical Bonnor-Ebert sphere with a central density of \sim 10^4 cm^{-3} in one model…
Sheet-like clouds are common in turbulent gas and perhaps form via collisions between turbulent gas flows. Having examined the evolution of an isothermal shocked slab in an earlier contribution, in this work we follow the evolution of a…
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…
Subsequent to Paper I, the evolution and fragmentation of a rotating magnetized cloud are studied with use of three-dimensional MHD nested-grid simulations. After the isothermal runaway collapse, an adiabatic gas forms a protostellar first…
Hydrodynamical calculations in three space dimensions of the collapse of an isothermal, centrally condensed, rotating 1 M\sol protostellar cloud are presented. A numerical algorithm involving nested subgrids is used to resolve the region…
Understanding the formation of binary and multiple stellar systems largely comes down to studying the circumstances for the fragmentation of a condensing core during the first stages of the collapse. However, the probability of…
We use numerical hydrodynamic simulations to investigate prestellar core formation in the dynamic environment of giant molecular clouds, focusing on planar post-shock layers produced by colliding turbulent flows. A key goal is to test how…
We revisit the interpretation of blue-excess molecular lines from dense collapsing cores, considering recent numerical results that suggest prestellar core collapse occurs from the outside-in, and not inside-out. We thus create synthetic…
We examined the gravitational contraction of isothermal molecular cloud cores with slow rotation by means of two-dimensional numerical simulations. Applying a sink-cell method, we followed the evolution of the cloud cores up to the stages…
Self-similar solutions provide good descriptions for the gravitational collapse of spherical clouds or stars when the gas obeys a polytropic equation of state, $p=K\rho^\gamma$ (with $\gamma\le 4/3$). We study the behaviors of nonradial…
Models of self-gravitating gas in the early stages of pressure-free collapse are compared for initial states which are equilibrium layers, cylinders, and Bonnor-Ebert spheres. For each geometrical case the density profile has an inner…
We investigate numerically and semi-analytically the collapse of low-mass, rotating prestellar cores. Initially, the cores are in approximate equilibrium with low rotation (the initial ratio of thermal to gravitational energy is $\alpha_0…
We present idealized numerical simulations of prestellar gravitational collapse of a moderate initial filamentary perturbation with an additional central ellipsoidal enhancement (a core) considering a uniform, and a stratified background,…
Theoretically, stars have been formed from the collapse of cores in the molecular clouds. Historically, the core had been assumed as an singular isothermal sphere (SIS), and the collapse had been investigated by a self-similar manner. This…
Gravitational collapse of the cylindrical elongated cloud is studied by numerical magnetohydrodynamical simulations. In the infinitely long cloud in hydrostatic configuration, small perturbations grow by the gravitational instability. The…
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…
We compute numerical simulations of spherical collapse triggered by a slow increase in external pressure. We compare isothermal models to models including cooling with a simple but self-consistent treatment of the coupling between gas,…
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…
In order to understand the collapse dynamics of observed low-mass starless cores, we revise the conventional stability condition of hydrostatic Bonnor-Ebert spheres to take internal motions into account. Because observed starless cores…