762 research outputs found
On the effects of rotation during the formation of population III protostars
It has been suggested that turbulent motions are responsible for the
transport of angular momentum during the formation of Population III stars,
however the exact details of this process have never been studied. We report
the results from three dimensional SPH simulations of a rotating
self-gravitating primordial molecular cloud, in which the initial velocity of
solid-body rotation has been changed. We also examine the build-up of the discs
that form in these idealized calculations.Comment: 4 pages, AIP Conference Proceedings, First Stars IV from Hayashi to
the Future (Kyoto, Japan
The First Stellar Cluster
We report results from numerical simulations of star formation in the early
universe that focus on gas at very high densities and very low metallicities.
We argue that the gas in the central regions of protogalactic halos will
fragment as long as it carries sufficient angular momentum. Rotation leads to
the build-up of massive disk-like structures which fragment to form protostars.
At metallicities Z ~ 10^-5 Zsun, dust cooling becomes effective and leads to a
sudden drop of temperature at densities above n = 10^12 cm^-3. This induces
vigorous fragmentation, leading to a very densely-packed cluster of low-mass
stars. This is the first stellar cluster. The mass function of stars peaks
below 1 Msun, similar to what is found in the solar neighborhood, and
comparable to the masses of the very-low metallicity subgiant stars recently
discovered in the halo of our Milky Way. We find that even purely primordial
gas can fragment at densities 10^14 cm^-3 < n < 10^16 cm^-3, although the
resulting mass function contains only a few objects (at least a factor of ten
less than the Z = 10^-5 Zsun mass function), and is biased towards higher
masses. A similar result is found for gas with Z = 10^-6 Zsun. Gas with Z <=
10^-6 Zsun behaves roughly isothermally at these densities (with polytropic
exponent gamma ~ 1.06) and the massive disk-like structures that form due to
angular momentum conservation will be marginally unstable. As fragmentation is
less efficient, we expect stars with Z <= 10^-6 Zsun to be massive, with masses
in excess of several tens of solar masses, consistent with the results from
previous studies.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Accepted by ApJ for publicatio
Clump Lifetimes and the Initial Mass Function
Recent studies of dense clumps/cores in a number of regions of low-mass star
formation have shown that the mass distribution of these clumps closely
resembles the initial mass function (IMF) of field stars. One possible
interpretation of these observations is that we are witnessing the
fragmentation of the clouds into the IMF, and the observed clumps are bound
pre-stellar cores. In this paper, we highlight a potential difficulty in this
interpretation, namely that clumps of varying mass are likely to have
systematically varying lifetimes. This timescale problem can effectively
destroy the similarity bewteen the clump and stellar mass functions, such that
a stellar-like clump mass function (CMF) results in a much steeper stellar IMF.
We also discuss some ways in which this problem may be avoided.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted to MNRA
The star formation efficiency and its relation to variations in the initial mass function
We investigate how the dynamical state of a turbulently supported, 1000 solar
mass, molecular cloud affects the properties of the cluster it forms, focusing
our discussion on the star formation efficiency (SFE) and the initial mass
function (IMF). A variety of initial energy states are examined in this paper,
ranging from clouds with PE = 0.1 KE to clouds with PE = 10 KE, and for both
isothermal and piece-wise polytropic equations of state (similar to that
suggested by Larson). It is found that arbitrary star formation efficiencies
are possible, with strongly unbound clouds yielding very low star formation
efficiencies. We suggest that the low star formation efficiency in the
Maddelena cloud may be a consequence of the relatively unbound state of its
internal structure. It is also found that competitive accretion results in the
observed IMF when the clouds have initial energy states of PE >= KE. We show
that under such conditions the shape of the IMF is independent of time in the
calculations. This demonstrates that the global accretion process can be
terminated at any stage in the cluster's evolution, while still yielding a
distribution of stellar masses that is consistent with the observed IMF. As the
clouds become progressively more unbound, competitive accretion is less
important and the protostellar mass function flattens. These results predict
that molecular clouds should be permeated with a distributed population of
stars that follow a flatter than Salpeter IMF.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted by MNRAS for publictaion. Now available
through the 'Online Early' schem
Interpreting the sub-linear Kennicutt-Schmidt relationship: The case for diffuse molecular gas
Recent statistical analysis of two extragalactic observational surveys
strongly indicate a sublinear Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relationship between the
star formation rate (Sigsfr) and molecular gas surface density (Sigmol). Here,
we consider the consequences of these results in the context of common
assumptions, as well as observational support for a linear relationship between
Sigsfr and the surface density of dense gas. If the CO traced gas depletion
time (tau_mol) is constant, and if CO only traces star forming giant molecular
clouds (GMCs), then the physical properties of each GMC must vary, such as the
volume densities or star formation rates. Another possibility is that the
conversion between CO luminosity and Sigmol, the XCO factor, differs from
cloud-to-cloud. A more straightforward explanation is that CO permeates the
hierarchical ISM, including the filaments and lower density regions within
which GMCs are embedded. A number of independent observational results support
this description, with the diffuse gas comprising at least 30% of the total
molecular content. The CO bright diffuse gas can explain the sublinear KS
relationship, and consequently leads to an increasing tau_mol with Sigmol. If
Sigsfr linearly correlates with the dense gas surface density, a sublinear KS
relationship indicates that the fraction of diffuse gas fdiff grows with
Sigmol. In galaxies where Sigmol falls towards the outer disk, this description
suggests that fdiff also decreases radially.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, to appear in MNRAS, comments welcom
Gravitational fragmentation in turbulent primordial gas and the initial mass function of Population III stars
We report results from numerical simulations of star formation in the early
universe that focus on the dynamical behavior of metal-free gas under different
initial and environmental conditions. In particular we investigate the role of
turbulence, which is thought to ubiquitously accompany the collapse of
high-redshift halos. We distinguish between two main cases: the birth of
Population III.1 stars - those which form in the pristine halos unaffected by
prior star formation - and the formation of Population III.2 stars - those
forming in halos where the gas is still metal free but has an increased
ionization fraction. This latter case can arise either from exposure to the
intense UV radiation of stellar sources in neighboring halos, or from the high
virial temperatures associated with the formation of massive halos, that is,
those with masses greater than 1e8 solar masses. We find that turbulent
primordial gas is highly susceptible to fragmentation in both cases, even for
turbulence in the subsonic regime, i.e. for rms velocity dispersions as low as
20 % of the sound speed. Contrary to our original expectations, fragmentation
is more vigorous and more widespread in pristine halos compared to pre-ionized
ones. We therefore predict Pop III.1 stars to be on average of somewhat lower
mass, and form in larger groups, than Pop III.2 stars. We find that fragment
masses cover over two orders of magnitude, indicating that the resulting
Population III initial mass function was significantly extended in mass as
well. This prompts the need for a large, high-resolution study of the formation
of dark matter minihalos that is capable of resolving the turbulent flows in
the gas at the moment when the baryons become self-gravitating. This would help
determine which, if any, of the initial conditions presented in our study are
realized in nature.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
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