Protostars grow in mass by accreting material through their discs, and this accretion is initially their main source of luminosity. The resulting radiative feedback heats the environments of young protostars, and may thereby suppress further fragment
ation and star formation. There is growing evidence that the accretion of material onto protostars is episodic rather than continuous; most of it happens in short bursts that last up to a few hundred years, whereas the intervals between these outbursts of accretion could be thousands of years. We have developed a model to include the effects of episodic accretion in simulations of star formation. Episodic accretion results in episodic radiative feedback, which heats and temporarily stabilises the disc, suppressing the growth of gravitational instabilities. However, once an outburst has been terminated, the luminosity of the protostar is low, and the disc cools rapidly. Provided that there is enough time between successive outbursts, the disc may become gravitationally unstable and fragment. The model suggests that episodic accretion may allow disc fragmentation if (i) the time between successive outbursts is longer than the dynamical timescale for the growth of gravitational instabilities (a few kyr), and (ii) the quiescent accretion rate onto the protostar is sufficiently low (at most a few times 1e-7 Msun/yr). We also find that after a few protostars form in the disc, their own episodic accretion events shorten the intervals between successive outbursts, and sup- press further fragmentation, thus limiting the number of objects forming in the disc. We conclude that episodic accretion moderates the effect of radiative feedback from young protostars on their environments, and, under certain conditions, allows the formation of low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and planetary-mass objects by fragmentation of protostellar discs.
We suggest that a high proportion of brown dwarfs are formed by gravitational fragmentation of massive extended discs around Sun-like stars. Such discs should arise frequently, but should be observed infrequently, precisely because they fragment rapi
dly. By performing an ensemble of radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, we show that such discs fragment within a few thousand years, and produce mainlybrown dwarf (BDs) stars, but also planetary mass (PM) stars and very low-mass hydrogen-burning (HB) stars. Most of the the PM stars and BDs are ejected by mutual interactions. We analyse the statistical properties of these stars, and compare them with observations. After a few hundred thousand years the Sun-like primary is typically left with a close low-mass HB companion, and two much wider companions: a low-mass HB star and a BD star, or a BD-BD binary. There is a BD desert extending out to at least ~100 AU; this is because BDs tend to be formed further out than low-mass HB stars, and then they tend to be scattered even further out, or even into the field. BDs form with discs of a few Mj and radii of a few tens of AU, and they are more likely to retain these discs if they remain bound to the primary star. Binaries form by pairing of the newly-formed stars in the disc, giving a low-mass binary fraction of ~0.16. These binaries include close and wide BD/BD binaries and BD/PM binaries. BDs that remain as companions to Sun-like stars are more likely to be in BD/BD binaries than are BDs ejected into the field. Disc fragmentation is a robust mechanism; even if only a small fraction of Sun-like stars host the required massive extended discs,this mechanism can produce all the PM stars observed, most of the BD stars, and a significant proportion of the very low-mass HB stars.
We suggest that a high proportion of brown dwarfs are formed by gravitational fragmentation of massive, extended discs around Sun-like stars. We argue that such discs should arise frequently, but should be observed infrequently, precisely because the
y fragment rapidly. By performing an ensemble of radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, we show that such discs typically fragment within a few thousand years to produce mainly brown dwarfs (including planetary-mass brown dwarfs) and low-mass hydrogen-burning stars. Subsequently most of the brown dwarfs are ejected by mutual interactions. We analyse the properties of these objects that form by disc fragmentation, and compare them with observations.
