No Arabic abstract
We study effect of magnetic field on massive dense core formation in colliding unequal molecular clouds by performing magnetohydrodynamic simulations with sub-parsec resolution (0.015 pc) that can resolve the molecular cores. Initial clouds with the typical gas density of the molecular clouds are immersed in various uniform magnetic fields. The turbulent magnetic fields in the clouds consistent with the observation by Crutcher et al. (2010) are generated by the internal turbulent gas motion before the collision, if the uniform magnetic field strength is 4.0 $mu$G. The collision speed of 10 km s$^{-1}$ is adopted, which is much larger than the sound speeds and the Alfv{e}n speeds of the clouds. We identify gas clumps with gas densities greater than 5 $times$ 10$^{-20}$ g cm$^{-3}$ as the dense cores and trace them throughout the simulations to investigate their mass evolution and gravitational boundness. We show that a greater number of massive, gravitationally bound cores are formed in the strong magnetic field (4.0 $mu$G) models than the weak magnetic field (0.1 $mu$G) models. This is partly because the strong magnetic field suppresses the spatial shifts of the shocked layer that should be caused by the nonlinear thin shell instability. The spatial shifts promote formation of low-mass dense cores in the weak magnetic field models. The strong magnetic fields also support low-mass dense cores against gravitational collapse. We show that the numbers of massive, gravitationally bound cores formed in the strong magnetic field models are much larger than the isolated, non-colliding cloud models, which are simulated for comparison. We discuss the implications of our numerical results on massive star formation.
W51A is one of the most active star-forming region in our Galaxy, which contains giant molecular clouds with a total mass of 10^6 Msun. The molecular clouds have multiple velocity components over ~20 km/s, and interactions between these components have been discussed as the mechanism which triggered the massive star formation in W51A. In this paper, we report an observational study of the molecular clouds in W51A using the new 12CO, 13CO, and C18O (J=1-0) data covering a 1.4x1.0 degree region of W51A obtained with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope at 20 resolution. Our CO data resolved the four discrete velocity clouds at 50, 56, 60, and 68 km/s with sizes and masses of ~30 pc and 1.0-1.9x10^5 Msun. Toward the central part of the HII region complex G49.5-0.4, we identified four C18O clumps having sizes of ~1 pc and column densities of higher than 10^23 cm^-3, which are each embedded within the four velocity clouds. These four clumps are distributed close to each others within a small distance of 5 pc, showing a complementary distribution on the sky. In the position-velocity diagram, these clumps are connected with each others by bridge features with intermediate intensities. The high intensity ratios of 13CO (J=3-2/J=1-0) also indicates that these four clouds are associated with the HII regions. We also found these features in other HII regions in W51A. The timescales of the collisions are estimated to be several 0.1 Myrs as a crossing time of the clouds, which are consistent with the ages of the HII regions measured from the size of the HII regions in the 21 cm continuum emissions. We discuss the cloud-cloud collision scenario and massive star formation in W51A by comparing with the recent observational and theoretical studies of cloud-cloud collision.
Understanding the mechanism of O star formation is one of the most important issues in current astrophysics. It is also an issue of keen interest how O stars affect their surroundings and trigger secondary star formation. An H,emissiontype{II} region RCW79 is one of the typical Spitzer bubbles alongside of RCW120. New observations of CO $J=$ 1--0 emission with Mopra and NANTEN2 revealed that molecular clouds are associated with RCW79 in four velocity components over a velocity range of 20 km s$^{-1}$. We hypothesize that two of the clouds collided with each other and the collision triggered the formation of 12 O stars inside of the bubble and the formation of 54 low mass young stellar objects along the bubble wall. The collision is supported by observational signatures of bridges connecting different velocity components in the colliding clouds. The whole collision process happened in a timescale of $sim$1 Myr. RCW79 has a larger size by a factor of 30 in the projected area than RCW120 with a single O star, and the large size favored formation of the 12 O stars due to the larger accumulated gas in the collisional shock compression.
Using the NANTEN2 Observatory, we carried out a molecular line study of high-mass star forming regions with reflection nebulae, NGC 2068 and NGC 2071, in Orion in the 13CO(J=2-1) transition. The 13CO distribution shows that there are two velocity components at 9.0 and 10.5 km/s . The blue-shifted component is in the northeast associated with NGC 2071, whereas the red-shifted component is in the southwest associated with NGC 2068. The total intensity distribution of the two clouds shows a gap of ~1 pc, suggesting that they are detached at present. A detailed spatial comparison indicates that the two show complementary distributions. The blue-shifted component lies toward an intensity depression to the northwest of the red-shifted component, where we find that a displacement of 0.8 pc makes the two clouds fit well with each other. Furthermore, a new simulation of non-frontal collisions shows that observations from 60 degrees off the collisional axis agreed well with the velocity structure in this region. On the basis of these results, we hypothesize that the two components collided with each other at a projected relative velocity 3.0 km/s estimated to be 0.3 Myr for an assumed axis of the relative motion 60 degrees off the line of sight. We assume that the two most massive early B-type stars in the cloud, illuminating stars of the two reflection nebulae, were formed by collisional triggering at the interfaces between the two clouds. Given the other young high-mass star forming regions, namely, M42, M43, and NGC 2024 (Fukui et al. 2018b; Ohama et al. 2017a), it seems possible that collisional triggering has been independently working to form O-type and early B-type stars in Orion in the last Myr over a projected distance of ~80 pc.
We report a possibility that the high-mass star located in the HII region RCW 34 was formed by a triggering induced by a collision of molecular clouds. Molecular gas distributions of the $^{12}$CO and $^{13}$CO $J=$2-1, and $^{12}$CO $J=$3-2 lines toward RCW 34 were measured by using the NANTEN2 and ASTE telescopes. We found two clouds with the velocity ranges of 0-10 km s$^{-1}$ and 10-14 km s$^{-1}$. Whereas the former cloud as massive as ~2.7 x 10$^{4}$ Msun has a morphology similar to the ring-like structure observed in the infrared wavelengths, the latter cloud with the mass of ~10$^{3}$ Msun, which has not been recognized by previous observations, distributes just likely to cover the bubble enclosed by the other cloud. The high-mass star with the spectral types of O8.5V is located near the boundary of the two clouds. The line intensity ratio of $^{12}$CO $J=$3-2 / $J=$2-1 yields high values (~1.5) in the neighborhood of the high-mass star, suggesting that these clouds are associated with the massive star. We also confirmed that the obtained position-velocity diagram shows a similar distribution with that derived by a numerical simulation of the supersonic collision of two clouds. Using the relative velocity between the two clouds (~5 km s$^{-1}$), the collisional time scale is estimated to be $sim$0.2 Myr with the assumption of the distance of 2.5 kpc. These results suggest that the high-mass star in RCW 34 was formed rapidly within a time scale of ~0.2 Myr via a triggering of cloud-cloud collision.
Star formation is a fundamental process for galactic evolution. One issue over the last several decades has been determining whether star formation is induced by external triggers or is self-regulated in a closed system. The role of an external trigger, which can effectively collect mass in a small volume, has attracted particular attention in connection with the formation of massive stellar clusters, which in the extreme may lead to starbursts. Recent observations have revealed massive cluster formation triggered by cloud-cloud collisions in nearby interacting galaxies, including the Magellanic system and the Antennae Galaxies as well as almost all well-known high-mass star-forming regions such as RCW 120, M20, M42, NGC 6334, etc., in the Milky Way. Theoretical efforts are laying the foundation for the mass compression that causes massive cluster/star formation. Here, we review the recent progress on cloud-cloud collisions and triggered star-cluster formation and discuss the future prospects for this area of research.