Related papers: Nonlinear Criterion for the Stability of Molecular…
We present an analysis of the large-scale molecular cloud structure and of the stability of clumpy structures in nearby molecular clouds. In our recent work, we identified a structural transition in molecular clouds by studying the…
We investigate the effect of numerical magnetic diffusion in magnetohydrodynamic simulations of magnetically supported molecular clouds. To this end, we have performed numerical studies on adaptive mesh isothermal simulations of marginally…
Explosive events from magnetars are likely due to the catastrophic release of stress in their crusts, but the behavior of crustal matter beyond linear elasticity is poorly understood. We argue here that seminal results from molecular…
We construct a one-parameter family of exact time-dependent solutions to 2+1 gravity with a negative cosmological constant and a massless minimally coupled scalar field as source. These solutions present a continuously self-similar (CSS)…
The collapse of singular magnetized toroids (Li & Shu 1996) is a natural representation of an early phase in star formation, bridging the prestellar and protostellar phases of the collapse of molecular cloud cores. We revisit the collapse…
In order to understand the origin of observed molecular cloud properties, it is critical to understand how clouds interact with their environments during their formation, growth, and collapse. It has been suggested that accretion-driven…
Recent observations suggest galaxies may ubiquitously host a molecular component to their multiphase circumgalactic medium (CGM). However, the structure and kinematics of the molecular CGM remains understudied theoretically and largely…
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…
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,…
Though flux freezing is a good approximation frequently assumed for molecular clouds, ambipolar diffusion (AD) is inevitable at certain scales. The scale at which AD sets in can be a crucial parameter for turbulence and the star formation…
A comparison of accretion and (turbulent) magnetic diffusion timescales for sheets and filaments demonstrates that dense star-forming clouds generally will -- under realistic conditions -- become supercritical due to mass accretion on…
We perform three-dimensional shearing-box hydrodynamical simulations to explore the outcome of gravitational instability in the outer regions of neutrino-cooled disks such as those formed from the collapse of rotating massive stars…
Molecular clouds often exhibit filamentary or sheet-like shapes. We compute the free-fall time ($\tff$) for finite, uniform, self-gravitating circular sheets and filamentary clouds of small but finite thickness, so that their volume density…
Filaments are an ubiquitous feature of molecular clouds, and appear to play a critical role in assembling the material to form stars. The dominant filaments are observed to have a rather narrow range of widths around $\sim 0.1$ pc, and to…
Critical collapse is a well-studied subject for a variety of self-gravitating matter. One of the most intensively examined models is that of perfect fluids, which have been used extensively to describe compact objects such as stars, as well…
A fundamental assumption in our understanding of disks is that when the Toomre Q>>1, the disk is stable against fragmentation into self-gravitating objects (and so cannot form planets via direct collapse). But if disks are turbulent, this…
Star formation in magnetically subcritical clouds is investigated using a three-dimensional non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamics simulation. Since rapid cloud collapse is suppressed until the magnetic flux is sufficiently removed from the…
We prove that, in a class of spherically symmetric spacetimes exhibiting stable trapping of null geodesics, linear waves cannot (uniformly) decay faster than logarithmically. When these linear waves are treated as a model for nonlinear…
We calculate and analyze the longevity of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave modes that occur in the plane of a magnetic thin sheet. Initial turbulent conditions applied to a magnetically subcritical cloud are shown to lead to relatively rapid…
Collapse models predict the spontaneous collapse of the wave function, in order to avoid the emergence of macroscopic superpositions. In their mass-dependent formulation they claim that the collapse of any system's wave function depends on…