Radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of massive star formation using Monte Carlo radiative transfer - I. Algorithms and numerical methods

Copyright © 2015 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical SocietyWe present a set of new numerical methods that are relevant to calculating radiation pressure terms in hydrodynamics calculations, with a particular focus on massive star formation. The radiation force is determined from a Monte Carlo estimator and enables a complete treatment of the detailed microphysics, including polychromatic radiation and anisotropic scattering, in both the free-streaming and optically thick limits. Since the new method is computationally demanding we have developed two new methods that speed up the algorithm. The first is a photon packet splitting algorithm that enables efficient treatment of the Monte Carlo process in very optically thick regions. The second is a parallelization method that distributes the Monte Carlo workload over many instances of the hydrodynamic domain, resulting in excellent scaling of the radiation step. We also describe the implementation of a sink particle method that enables us to follow the accretion on to, and the growth of, the protostars. We detail the results of extensive testing and benchmarking of the new algorithms.Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC

Radial and rotational velocities of young brown dwarfs and very low-mass stars in the Upper Scorpius OB association and the rho Ophiuchi cloud core

We present the results of a radial velocity (RV) survey of 14 brown dwarfs (BDs) and very low-mass (VLM) stars in the Upper Scorpius OB association (UScoOB) and 3 BD candidates in the rho Ophiuchi dark cloud core. We obtained high-resolution echelle spectra at the Very Large Telescope using Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) at two different epochs for each object, and measured the shifts in their RVs to identify candidates for binary/multiple systems in the sample. The average time separation of the RV measurements is 21.6d, and our survey is sensitive to the binaries with separation < 0.1 au. We found that 4 out of 17 objects (or 24^{+16}_{-13} per cent by fraction) show a significant RV change in 4-33d time scale, and are considered as binary/multiple `candidates.' We found no double-lined spectroscopic binaries in our sample, based on the shape of cross-correlation curves. The RV dispersion of the objects in UScoOB is found to be very similar to that of the BD and VLM stars in Chamaeleon I (Cha I). We also found the distribution of the mean rotational velocities (v sin i) of the UScoOB objects is similar to that of the Cha I, but the dispersion of v sin i is much larger than that of the Cha I objects.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Indirect Detection of Forming Protoplanets via Chemical Asymmetries in Disks

We examine changes in the molecular abundances resulting from increased heating due to a self-luminous planetary companion embedded within a narrow circumstellar disk gap. Using 3D models that include stellar and planetary irradiation, we find that luminous young planets locally heat up the parent circumstellar disk by many tens of Kelvin, resulting in efficient thermal desorption of molecular species that are otherwise locally frozen out. Furthermore, the heating is deposited over large regions of the disk, $\pm5$ AU radially and spanning $\lesssim60^\circ$ azimuthally. From the 3D chemical models, we compute rotational line emission models and full ALMA simulations, and find that the chemical signatures of the young planet are detectable as chemical asymmetries in $\sim10h$ observations. HCN and its isotopologues are particularly clear tracers of planetary heating for the models considered here, and emission from multiple transitions of the same species is detectable, which encodes temperature information in addition to possible velocity information from the spectra itself. We find submillimeter molecular emission will be a useful tool to study gas giant planet formation in situ, especially beyond $R\gtrsim10$ AU.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

What can the SEDs of first hydrostatic core candidates reveal about their nature?

The first hydrostatic core (FHSC) is the first stable object to form in simulations of star formation. This stage has yet to be observed definitively, although several candidate FHSCs have been reported. We have produced synthetic spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from 3D hydrodynamical simulations of pre-stellar cores undergoing gravitational collapse for a variety of initial conditions. Variations in the initial rotation rate, radius and mass lead to differences in the location of the SED peak and far-infrared flux. Secondly, we attempt to fit the SEDs of five FHSC candidates from the literature and five newly identified FHSC candidates located in the Serpens South molecular cloud with simulated SEDs. The most promising FHSC candidates are fitted by a limited number of model SEDs with consistent properties, which suggests the SED can be useful for placing constraints on the age and rotation rate of the source. The sources we consider most likely to be in FHSC phase are B1-bN, CB17-MMS, Aqu-MM1 and Serpens South candidate K242. We were unable to fit SerpS-MM22, Per-Bolo 58 and Chamaeleon-MMS1 with reasonable parameters, which indicates that they are likely to be more evolved.Comment: 26 pages, 28 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

The effect of episodic accretion on the phase transition of CO and CO2 in low-mass star formation

Copyright © ESO, 2013We study the evaporation and condensation of CO and CO_2 during the embedded stages of low-mass star formation by using numerical simulations. We focus on the effect of luminosity bursts, similar in magnitude to FUors and EXors, on the gas-phase abundance of CO and CO_2 in the protostellar disk and infalling envelope. The evolution of a young protostar and its environment is followed based on hydrodynamical models using the thin-disk approximation, coupled with a stellar evolution code and phase transformations of CO and CO_2. The accretion and associated luminosity bursts in our model are caused by disk gravitational fragmentation followed by quick migration of the fragments onto the forming protostar. We found that bursts with luminosity on the order of 100-200 L_sun can evaporate CO ices in part of the envelope. The typical freeze-out time of the gas-phase CO onto dust grains in the envelope (a few kyr) is much longer than the burst duration (100-200 yr). This results in an increased abundance of the gas-phase CO in the envelope long after the system has returned into a quiescent stage. In contrast, luminosity bursts can evaporate CO_2 ices only in the disk, where the freeze-out time of the gas-phase CO_2 is comparable to the burst duration. We thus confirm that luminosity bursts can leave long-lasting traces in the abundance of gas-phase CO in the infalling envelope, enabling the detection of recent bursts as suggested by previous semi-analytical studies.Royal SocietyEuropean Community Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC

An algorithm for Monte-Carlo time-dependent radiation transfer

A new Monte-Carlo algorithm for calculating time-dependent radiative-transfer under the assumption of LTE is presented. Unlike flux-limited diffusion the method is polychromatic, includes scattering, and is able to treat the optically thick and free-streaming regimes simultaneously. The algorithm is tested on a variety of 1-d and 2-d problems, and good agreement with benchmark solutions is found. The method is used to calculate the time-varying spectral energy distribution from a circumstellar disc illuminated by a protostar whose accretion luminosity is varying. It is shown that the time lag between the optical variability and the infrared variability results from a combination of the photon travel time and the thermal response in the disc, and that the lag is an approximately linear function of wavelength.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication by MNRA

The ancient heritage of water ice in the solar system

Identifying the source of Earth's water is central to understanding the origins of life-fostering environments and to assessing the prevalence of such environments in space. Water throughout the solar system exhibits deuterium-to-hydrogen enrichments, a fossil relic of low-temperature, ion-derived chemistry within either (i) the parent molecular cloud or (ii) the solar nebula protoplanetary disk. Utilizing a comprehensive treatment of disk ionization, we find that ion-driven deuterium pathways are inefficient, curtailing the disk's deuterated water formation and its viability as the sole source for the solar system's water. This finding implies that if the solar system's formation was typical, abundant interstellar ices are available to all nascent planetary systems.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures including main text and supplementary materials. Published in Scienc

Exploring the Origins of Deuterium Enrichments in Solar Nebular Organics

Deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) enrichments in molecular species provide clues about their original formation environment. The organic materials in primitive solar system bodies have generally higher D/H ratios and show greater D/H variation when compared to D/H in solar system water. We propose this difference arises at least in part due to 1) the availability of additional chemical fractionation pathways for organics beyond that for water, and 2) the higher volatility of key carbon reservoirs compared to oxygen. We test this hypothesis using detailed disk models, including a sophisticated, new disk ionization treatment with a low cosmic ray ionization rate, and find that disk chemistry leads to higher deuterium enrichment in organics compared to water, helped especially by fractionation via the precursors CH$_2$D$^+$/CH$_3^+$. We also find that the D/H ratio in individual species varies significantly depending on their particular formation pathways. For example, from $\sim20-40$ AU, CH$_4$ can reach $\rm{D/H\sim2\times10^{-3}}$, while D/H in CH$_3$OH remains locally unaltered. Finally, while the global organic D/H in our models can reproduce intermediately elevated D/H in the bulk hydrocarbon reservoir, our models are unable to reproduce the most deuterium-enriched organic materials in the solar system, and thus our model requires some inheritance from the cold interstellar medium from which the Sun formed.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap