Related papers: Generalized Collapse Solutions with Nonzero Initia…
A large fraction of the gas in the Galaxy is cold, dense, and molecular. If all this gas collapsed under the influence of gravity and formed stars in a local free-fall time, the star formation rate in the Galaxy would exceed that observed…
We present preliminary numerical evidence that the physical conditions in high-mass star forming regions can arise from global gravitational infall, with the velocity dispersions being caused primarily by infall motions rather than random…
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…
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…
Stars generally form faster than the ambipolar diffusion time, suggesting that several processes short circuit the delay and promote a rapid collapse. These processes are considered here, including turbulence compression in the outer parts…
We show the existence of a new class of initially smooth spherically symmetric self-similar solutions to the non-isentropic Euler-Poisson system. These solutions exhibit supersonic gravitational implosion in the sense that the density…
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,…
(Abridged) Aims & Methods. A two-dimensional, semi-analytical model is presented that follows, for the first time, the chemical evolution from a collapsing molecular cloud (a pre-stellar core) to a protostar and circumstellar disk. The…
First, we have ensured that spherical nonrotating collisionless systems collapse with almost retaining spherical configurations during initial contraction phases even if they are allowed to collapse three-dimensionally. Next, on the…
We propose an extension of the semi-analytical solutions derived by Lin et al. (1965) describing the two-dimensional homologous collapse of a self-gravitating rotating cloud having uniform density and spheroidal shape, which includes…
We study the self-similar collapse of an isothermal magnetized rotating cloud in the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) regime. In the limit of small distance from the accreting protostar we find an analytic solution that corresponds to…
We obtain self-similar solutions that describe the gravitational collapse of nonrotating, isothermal, magnetic molecular cloud cores. We use simplifying assumptions but explicitly include the induction equation, and the semianalytic…
We perform radiation hydrodynamical simulations of protostellar collapse in spherical symmetry, with a special focus on very low-mass objects, i.e. brown dwarfs and sub-brown dwarfs. The inclusion of a realistic equation of state that…
We extend our earlier work on ambipolar diffusion induced formation of protostellar cores in isothermal sheet-like magnetic interstellar clouds, by studying nonaxisymmetric collapse for the physically interesting regime of magnetically…
We formulate the problem of the formation of magnetically supercritical cores in magnetically subcritical parent molecular clouds, and the subsequent collapse of the cores to high densities, past the detachment of ions from magnetic field…
A spherically symmetric hydrodynamic stellar core collapse under gravity is time-dependent and may become unstable once disturbed. Specifically for a homologously collapse of stellar core characterized by a polytropic exponent \Gamma=4/3,…
We investigate spherically-symmetric, general relativistic systems of collapsing perfect fluid distributions. We consider neutron star models that are driven to collapse by the addition of an initially "in-going" velocity profile to the…
We study the collapse of spherical cold clouds beyond black hole formation to investigate the possibility of a bounce in the in-falling matter when a critical density or pressure is reached. As a first step, we analyse the pressureless…
Emission line profiles of tracer molecule H$_2$CO 140 GHz transition from gravitational core collapsing clouds in the dynamic process of forming protostars are calculated, using a simple ray-tracing radiative transfer model. Three…
We present the results of a large suite of three-dimensional (3D) models of the collapse of magnetic molecular cloud cores using the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code Enzo2.2 in the ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) approximation. The…