Related papers: The structure of self-gravitating clouds
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…
Recent observations of hydrostatic structure and virial equilibrium in supersonically turbulent, self-gravitating molecular clouds imply a stability that contrasts with the transcience of turbulent structure. To investigate this…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…
The dense molecular cloud cores that form stars, like other self-gravitating objects, undergo bulk oscillations. Just at the point of gravitational instability, their fundamental oscillation mode has zero frequency. We study, using…
We study gravitational collapse of low-metallicity gas clouds and the formation of protostars by three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. Grain growth, non-equilibrium chemistry, molecular cooling, and chemical heating are solved in a…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
The thermal and chemical evolution of gravitationally collapsing protostellar clouds is investigated, focusing attention on their dependence on metallicity. Calculations are carried out for a range of metallicities spanning the local…
Aims. Dust plays a crucial role in the evolution of protoplanetary disks. We study the dynamics and growth of initially sub-$\mu m$ dust particles in self-gravitating young protoplanetary disks with various strengths of turbulent viscosity.…
The gas clouds of the interstellar medium have a fractal structure, the origin of which has generally been thought to lie in turbulence. The energy of turbulence could come from galactic rotation at large-scale, then cascade down to be…
We examine the physical parameters that affect the accumulation of gas in molecular clouds to high column densities where the formation of stars takes place. In particular, we analyze the dense gas mass fraction (DGMF) in a set of…
We review recent results from numerical simulations and related models of MHD turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM) and in molecular clouds. We discuss the implications of turbulence for the processes of cloud formation and evolution,…
We present three numerical simulations of randomly driven, isothermal, non-magnetic, self-gravitating turbulence with different rms Mach numbers Ms and physical sizes L, but approximately the same value of the virial parameter, alpha approx…
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…
We performed simulations of self-gravitating hydrodynamic turbulence to model the formation of filaments, clumps and cores in molecular clouds. We find that when the mass on the initial computational grid is comparable to the Jeans mass,…
We study the linear evolution of small perturbations in self-gravitating fluid systems in two spatial dimensions; we consider both cylindrical and cartesian (i.e., slab) geometries. The treatment is general, but the application is to…
We investigate the physical properties of dense cores formed in turbulent, magnetized, parsec-scale clumps of molecular clouds, using three-dimensional numerical simulations that include protostellar outflow feedback. The dense cores are…
Star formation in our Galaxy occurs in molecular clouds that are self-gravitating, highly turbulent, and magnetized. We study the conditions under which cloud cores inherit large-scale magnetic field morphologies and how the field is…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
We conduct numerical experiments to determine the density probability distribution function (PDF) produced in supersonic, isothermal, self-gravitating turbulence of the sort that is ubiquitous in star-forming molecular clouds. Our…
Stars form within molecular clouds but our understanding of this fundamental process remains hampered by the complexity of the physics that drives their evolution. We review our observational and theoretical knowledge of molecular clouds…