Related papers: Molecular Evolution in Collapsing Prestellar Cores…
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…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of protostellar collapse is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. Observationally, there are two…
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…
In this study, we investigate the shapes of starless and protostellar cores using hydrodynamic, self-gravitating adaptive mesh refinement simulations of turbulent molecular clouds. We simulate observations of these cores in dust emission,…
Using hydrodynamic simulations we investigate the time evolution and fragmentation of regions within molecular clouds which have lost their turbulent support leading to gravitational contraction. The initial density distributions are…
We report results from a cosmological simulation with non-equilibrium chemistry of 21 species, including H2, HD, and LiH molecular cooling. Starting from cosmological initial conditions, we focus on the evolution of the central 1.8 Kpc…
[abridged] We investigate the velocity structure of protostellar cores that result from non-magnetic numerical models of the gravoturbulent fragmentation of molecular cloud material. A large fraction of the cores analyzed are ``quiescent'',…
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 report the results of a numerical study on the initial formation stages of low-mass protostellar binary systems. We determine the separation of protostellar binaries formed as a function of the initial thermal state by varying the…
Under the assumptions that molecular clouds are nearly spatially and temporally isothermal and that the density peaks (``cores'') within them are formed by turbulent fluctuations, we argue that cores cannot reach a hydrostatic (or…
Context. The high degree of deuteration observed in some prestellar cores depends on the ortho-to-para H2 ratio through the H3+ fractionation. Aims. We want to constrain the ortho/para H2 ratio across the L183 prestellar core. This is…
We present here studies of collapse of purely baryonic Population III objects with masses ranging from $10M_\odot$ to $10^6M_\odot$. A spherical Lagrangian hydrodynamic code has been written to study the formation and evolution of the…
We recently proposed that molecular cloud dense cores undergo a prolonged period of quasi-static contraction prior to true collapse. This theory could explain the observation that many starless cores exhibit, through their spectral line…
The density profiles established in the self-similar dynamical phase of dark matter haloes recollapse are all close to isothermal. This is steeper than the predictions of some n-body simulations for the central regions of the halo, which…
We study quasi-static atmospheres of accreting protoplanetary cores for different opacity behaviors and realistic planetesimal accretion rates in various parts of protoplanetary nebula. Atmospheres segregate into those having outer…
The study of prestellar cores is critical as they set the initial conditions in star formation and determine the final mass of the stellar object. To date, several hypotheses are describing their gravitational collapse. We perform detailed…
Cloud evolution for various metallicities is investigated by three-dimensional nested grid simulations, in which the initial ratio of rotational to gravitational energy of the host cloud \beta_0 (=10^-1 - 10^-6) and cloud metallicity Z (=0…
Improving our understanding of the earliest stages of star formation is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. We discuss recent advances made in this area thanks to detailed…
We present measurements of the mean dense core lifetimes in numerical simulations of magnetically supercritical, turbulent, isothermal molecular clouds, in order to compare with observational determinations. "Prestellar" lifetimes (given as…
Dense, small molecular cloud cores have been identified as the direct progenitors of stars. One of the best studied examples is Barnard 68 which is considered a prototype stable, spherical gas core, confined by a diffuse high-pressure…