Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userCluster Assembly in Hierarchically Collapsing Clouds
77
0
0.0
(
0
)
Added by
Enrique Vazquez-Semadeni
Publication date
2016
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We discuss the mechanism of cluster formation in hierarchically collapsing molecular clouds. Recent evidence, both observational and numerical, suggests that molecular clouds (MCs) may be undergoing global, hierarchical gravitational collapse. The hierarchical regime consists of small-scale collapses within larger-scale ones. The latter implies that the star formation rate increases systematically during the early stages of evolution, and occurs via filamentary flows onto hubs of higher density, mass, and velocity dispersion, and culminates a few Myr after than the small-scale collapses have started to form stars. In turn, the small-scale collapses occur in clumps embedded in the filaments, and are themselves falling into the larger potential well of the still-ongoing large-scale collapse. The stars formed in the early, small-scale collapses share the infall motion of their parent clumps towards the larger potential trough, so that the filaments feed both gaseous and stellar material to the hubs. This leads to the presence of older stars in a region where new protostars are still forming, to a scale-free or fractal structure of the clusters, in which each unit is composed of smaller-scale ones, and to the eventual merging of the subunits, explaining the observed structural features of open clusters.
rate research
Read More
We discuss the mechanism of cluster formation in a numerical simulation of a molecular cloud (MC) undergoing global hierarchical collapse (GHC). The global nature of the collapse implies that the SFR increases over time. The hierarchical nature of the collapse consists of small-scale collapses within larger-scale ones. The large-scale collapses culminate a few Myr later than the small-scale ones and consist of filamentary flows that accrete onto massive central clumps. The small-scale collapses form clumps that are embedded in the filaments and falling onto the large-scale collapse centers. The stars formed in the early, small-scale collapses share the infall motion of their parent clumps. Thus, the filaments feed both gaseous and stellar material to the massive central clump. This leads to the presence of a few older stars in a region where new protostars are forming, and also to a self-similar structure, in which each unit is composed of smaller-scale sub-units that approach each other and may merge. Because the older stars formed in the filaments share the infall motion of the gas onto the central clump, they tend to have larger velocities and to be distributed over larger areas than the younger stars formed in the central clump. Finally, interpreting the IMF at face-value as a probability distribution implies that massive stars only form once the {it local} SFR is large enough to sample the IMF up to high masses. In combination with the increase of the SFR, this implies that massive stars tend to appear late in the evolution of the MC, and only in the central massive clumps. We discuss the correspondence of these features with observed properties of young stellar clusters, finding very good qualitative agreement, thus providing support to the scenario of global, hierarchical collapse of MCs, while explaining the origin of the observed cluster structure.
Cosmic rays (CR) play an important role in dense molecular cores, affecting their thermal and dynamical evolution and initiating the chemistry. Several studies have shown that the formation of protostellar discs in collapsing clouds is severely hampered by the braking torque exerted by the entrained magnetic field on the infalling gas, as long as the field remains frozen to the gas. We examine the possibility that the concentration and twisting of the field lines in the inner region of collapse can produce a significant reduction of the ionisation fraction. To check whether the CR ionisation rate (CRir) can fall below the critical value required to maintain good coupling, we first study the propagation of CRs in a model of a static magnetised cloud varying the relative strength of the toroidal/poloidal components and the mass-to-flux ratio. We then follow the path of CRs using realistic magnetic field configurations generated by numerical simulations of a rotating collapsing core. We find that an increment of the toroidal component of the magnetic field, or, in general, a more twisted configuration of the field lines, results in a decrease in the CR flux. This is mainly due to the magnetic mirroring effect that is stronger where larger variations in the field direction are present. In particular, we find a decrease of the CRir below 10^-18 s-1 in the central 300-400 AU, where density is higher than about 10^9 cm-3. This very low value of the CRir is attained in the cases of intermediate and low magnetisation (mass-to-flux ratio lambda=5 and 17, respectively) and for toroidal fields larger than about 40% of the total field. Magnetic field effects can significantly reduce the ionisation fraction in collapsing clouds. We provide a handy fitting formula to compute approximately the attenuation of the CRir in a molecular cloud as a function of the density and the magnetic configuration.
Formation of stars is now believed to be tightly linked to the dynamical evolution of interstellar filaments in which they form. In this paper we analyze the density structure and kinematics of a small network of infrared dark filaments, SDC13, observed in both dust continuum and molecular line emission with the IRAM 30m telescope. These observations reveal the presence of 18 compact sources amongst which the two most massive, MM1 and MM2, are located at the intersection point of the parsec-long filaments. The dense gas velocity and velocity dispersion observed along these filaments show smooth, strongly correlated, gradients. We discuss the origin of the SDC13 velocity field in the context of filament longitudinal collapse. We show that the collapse timescale of the SDC13 filaments (from 1 Myr to 4 Myr depending on the model parameters) is consistent with the presence of Class I sources in them, and argue that, on top of bringing more material to the centre of the system, collapse could generate additional kinematic support against local fragmentation, helping the formation of starless super-Jeans cores.
Primordial clouds are supposed to host the so-called population III stars. These stars are very massive and completely metal-free. The final stage of the life of population III stars with masses between 130 and 260 solar masses is a very energetic hypernova explosion. A hypernova drives a shock, behind which a spherically symmetric very dense supershell forms, which might become gravitationally unstable, fragment, and form stars. In this paper we study under what conditions can an expanding supershell become gravitationally unstable and how the feedback of these supershell stars (SSSs) affects its surroundings. We simulate, by means of a 1-D Eulerian hydrocode, the early evolution of the primordial cloud after the hypernova explosion, the formation of SSSs, and the following evolution, once the SSSs start to release energy and heavy elements into the interstellar medium. Our results indicate that a shell, enriched with nucleosynthetic products from SSSs, propagates inwards, towards the center of the primordial cloud. In a time span of a few Myr, this inward-propagating shell reaches a distance of only a few parsec away from the center of the primordial cloud. Its density is extremely high and its temperature very low, thus the conditions for a new episode of star formation are achieved. We study what fraction of these two distinct populations of stars can remain bound and survive until the present day. We study also under what conditions can this process repeat and form multiple stellar populations. We extensively discuss whether the proposed scenario can help to explain some open questions of the formation mechanism of globular clusters.
We present a cluster analysis of the bright main-sequence and faint pre--main-sequence stellar populations of a field ~ 90 x 90 pc centered on the HII region NGC 346/N66 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, from imaging with HST/ACS. We extend our earlier analysis on the stellar cluster population in the region to characterize the structuring behavior of young stars in the region as a whole with the use of stellar density maps interpreted through techniques designed for the study of the ISM structuring. In particular, we demonstrate with Cartwrigth & Whitworths Q parameter, dendrograms, and the Delta-variance wavelet transform technique that the young stellar populations in the region NGC 346/N66 are hierarchically clustered, in agreement with other regions in the Magellanic Clouds observed with HST. The origin of this hierarchy is currently under investigation.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
