Related papers: On the protostellar mass-luminosity relation
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…
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…
A model of protostar mass and luminosity evolution in clusters gives new estimates of cluster age, protostar birthrate, accretion rate and mean accretion time. The model assumes constant protostar birthrate, core-clump accretion, and…
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…
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…
Stars collect most of their mass during the protostellar stage, yet the accretion luminosity and stellar parameters, which are needed to compute the mass accretion rate, are poorly constrained for the youngest sources. The aim of this work…
The protostellar mass function (PMF) is the Present-Day Mass Function of the protostars in a region of star formation. It is determined by the initial mass function weighted by the accretion time. The PMF thus depends on the accretion…
Most protostars have luminosities that are fainter than expected from steady accretion over the protostellar lifetime. The solution to this problem may lie in episodic mass accretion -- prolonged periods of very low accretion punctuated by…
Class I protostars in three high-mass star-forming regions are found to have correlations among the local projected density of other Class I protostars, the summed flux from these other protostars, and the protostellar luminosity in the…
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…
We examine the recent data and analysis of Natta et al. concerning the accretion rate on to young stars as a function of stellar mass, and conclude that the apparently steep dependence of accretion rate on mass is strongly driven by…
We determine the observational signatures of protostellar cores by coupling two-dimensional radiative transfer calculations with numerical hydrodynamical simulations that predict accretion rates that both decline with time and feature…
The final mass of a newborn star is set at the epoch when the mass accretion onto the star is terminated. We study the evolution of accreting protostars and the limits of accretion in low metallicity environments. Accretion rates onto…
A relation between the mass accretion rate onto the central young star and the mass of the surrounding protoplanetary disk has long been theoretically predicted and observationally sought. For the first time, we have accurately and…
In an improved model of protostar mass functions (PMFs), protostars gain mass from isothermal cores in turbulent clumps. Their mass accretion rate is similar to Shu accretion at low mass, and to reduced Bondi accretion at high mass.…
We introduce a prescription for the luminosity from accreting protostars into smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation, and apply the method to simulations of five primordial minihalos generated from cosmological initial conditions. We…
Young stars are expected to gain most of their mass by accretion from a disk that forms around them as a result of angular momentum conservation in the collapsing protostellar cloud. Accretion initially proceeds at high rates of…
The mass of a protostar is calculated from the infall and dispersal of an isothermal sphere in a uniform background. For high contrast between peak and background densities and for short dispersal time t_d, the accretion is "self-limiting":…
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…