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 timescales at l
east an order of magnitude shorter than ambipolar and/or turbulent diffusion timescales. Thus, ambipolar or turbulent diffusion -- while present -- is unlikely to control the formation of cores and stars.
In an extension of Fischera & Martin (2012a) and Heitsch (2013), two aspects of the evolution of externally pressurized, hydrostatic filaments are discussed. (a) The free-fall accretion of gas onto such a filament will lead to filament parameters (sp
ecifically, FWHM--column density relations) inconsistent with the observations of Arzoumanian et al. (2011), except for two cases: For low-mass, isothermal filaments, agreement is found as in the analysis by Fischera & Martin (2012b). Magnetized cases, for which the field scales weakly with the density as $Bpropto n^{1/2}$, also reproduce observed parameters. (b) Realistically, the filaments will be embedded not only in gas of non-zero pressure, but also of non-zero density. Thus, the appearance of sheet-embedded filaments is explored. Generating a grid of filament models and comparing the resulting column density ratios and profile shapes with observations suggests that the three-dimensional filament profiles are intrinsically flatter than isothermal, beyond projection and evolution effects.
Two aspects of filamentary molecular cloud evolution are addressed: (1) Exploring analytically the role of the environment for the evolution of filaments demonstrates that considering them in isolation (i.e. just addressing the fragmentation stabilit
y) will result in unphysical conclusions about the filaments properties. Accretion can also explain the observed decorrelation between FWHM and peak column density. (2) Free-fall accretion onto finite filaments can lead to the characteristic fans of infrared-dark clouds around star-forming regions. The fans may form due to tidal forces mostly arising at the ends of the filaments, consistent with numerical models and earlier analytical studies.
The fragmentation of shocked flows in a thermally bistable medium provides a natural mechanism to form turbulent cold clouds as precursors to molecular clouds. Yet because of the large density and temperature differences and the range of dynamical sc
ales involved, following this process with numerical simulations is challenging. We compare two-dimensional simulations of flow-driven cloud formation without self-gravity, using the Lagrangian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code VINE and the Eulerian grid code Proteus. Results are qualitatively similar for both methods, yet the variable spatial resolution of the SPH method leads to smaller fragments and thinner filaments, rendering the overall morphologies different. Thermal and hydro-dynamical instabilities lead to rapid cooling and fragmentation into cold clumps with temperatures below 300K. For clumps more massive than 1 Msun/pc, the clump mass function has an average slope of -0.8. The internal velocity dispersion of the clumps is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than their relative motion, rendering it subsonic with respect to the internal sound speed of the clumps, but supersonic as seen by an external observer. For the SPH simulations most of the cold gas resides at temperatures below 100K, while the grid-based models show an additional, substantial component between 100 and 300K. Independently of the numerical method our models confirm that converging flows of warm neutral gas fragment rapidly and form high-density, low-temperature clumps as possible seeds for star formation.
Recent models of molecular cloud formation and evolution suggest that such clouds are dynamic and generally exhibit gravitational collapse. We present a simple analytic model of global collapse onto a filament and compare this with our numerical simu
lations of the flow-driven formation of an isolated molecular cloud to illustrate the supersonic motions and infall ram pressures expected in models of gravity-driven cloud evolution. We apply our results to observations of the Pipe Nebula, an especially suitable object for our purposes as its low star formation activity implies insignifcant perturbations from stellar feedback. We show that our collapsing cloud model can explain the magnitude of the velocity dispersions seen in the $^{13}$CO filamentary structure by Onishi et al. and the ram pressures required by Lada et al. to confine the lower-mass cores in the Pipe nebula. We further conjecture that higher-resolution simulations will show small velocity dispersions in the densest core gas, as observed, but which are infall motions and not supporting turbulence. Our results point out the inevitability of ram pressures as boundary conditions for molecular cloud filaments, and the possibility that especially lower-mass cores still can be accreting mass at significant rates, as suggested by observations.
We present two sets of grid-based hydrodynamical simulations of high-velocity clouds (HVCs) traveling through the diffuse, hot Galactic halo. These HI clouds have been suggested to provide fuel for ongoing star formation in the Galactic disk. The fir
st set of models is best described as a wind-tunnel experiment in which the HVC is exposed to a wind of constant density and velocity. In the second set of models we follow the trajectory of the HVC on its way through an isothermal hydrostatic halo towards the disk. Thus, we cover the two extremes of possible HVC trajectories. The resulting cloud morphologies exhibit a pronounced head-tail structure, with a leading dense cold core and a warm diffuse tail. Morphologies and velocity differences between head and tail are consistent with observations. For typical cloud velocities and halo densities, clouds with H{small{I}} masses $< 10^{4.5}$ M$_odot$ will lose their H{small{I}} content within 10 kpc or less. Their remnants may contribute to a population of warm ionized gas clouds in the hot coronal gas, and they may eventually be integrated in the warm ionized Galactic disk. Some of the (still over-dense, but now slow) material might recool, forming intermediate or low velocity clouds close to the Galactic disk. Given our simulation parameters and the limitation set by numerical resolution, we argue that the derived disruption distances are strong upper limits.
We demonstrate that the observationally inferred rapid onset of star formation after parental molecular clouds have assembled can be achieved by flow-driven cloud formation of atomic gas, using our previous three-dimensional numerical simulations. We
post-process these simulations to approximate CO formation, which allows us to investigate the times at which CO becomes abundant relative to the onset of cloud collapse. We find that global gravity in a finite cloud has two crucial effects on cloud evolution. (a) Lateral collapse (perpendicular to the flows sweeping up the cloud) leads to rapidly increasing column densities above the accumulation from the one-dimensional flow. This in turn allows fast formation of CO, allowing the molecular cloud to ``appear rapidly. (b) Global gravity is required to drive the dense gas to the high pressures necessary to form solar-mass cores, in support of recent analytical models of cloud fragmentation. While the clouds still appear ``supersonically turbulent, this turbulence is relegated to playing a secondary role, in that it is to some extent a consequence of gravitational forces.
We study numerically the formation of molecular clouds in large-scale colliding flows including self-gravity. The models emphasize the competition between the effects of gravity on global and local scales in an isolated cloud. Global gravity builds u
p large-scale filaments, while local gravity -- triggered by a combination of strong thermal and dynamical instabilities -- causes cores to form. The dynamical instabilities give rise to a local focusing of the colliding flows, facilitating the rapid formation of massive protostellar cores of a few 100 M$_odot$. The forming clouds do not reach an equilibrium state, though the motions within the clouds appear comparable to ``virial. The self-similar core mass distributions derived from models with and without self-gravity indicate that the core mass distribution is set very early on during the cloud formation process, predominantly by a combination of thermal and dynamical instabilities rather than by self-gravity.
