1,204 research outputs found
Global Models for the Evolution of Embedded, Accreting Protostellar Disks
Most analytic work to date on protostellar disks has focused on those in
isolation from their environments. However, observations are now beginning to
probe the earliest, most embedded phases of star formation, during which disks
are rapidly accreting from their parent cores and cannot be modeled in
isolation. We present a simple, one-zone model of protostellar accretion disks
with high mass infall rates. Our model combines a self-consistent calculation
of disk temperatures with an approximate treatment of angular momentum
transport via two mechanisms. We use this model to survey the properties of
protostellar disks across a wide range of stellar masses and evolutionary
times, and make predictions for disks' masses, sizes, spiral structure, and
fragmentation that will be directly testable by future large-scale surveys of
deeply embedded disks. We define a dimensionless accretion-rotation parameter
which, in conjunction with the disk's temperature, controls the disk evolution.
We track the dominant mode of angular momentum transport, and demonstrate that
for stars with final masses greater than roughly one solar mass, gravitational
instabilities are the most important mechanism as most of the mass accumulates.
We predict that binary formation through disk fission, fragmentation of the
disk into small objects, and spiral arm strength all increase in importance to
higher stellar masses.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. Model updated
to better reflect simulations in the literature; discussion of key
assumptions and strategy clarifie
Simulations of protostellar collapse using multigroup radiation hydrodynamics. I. The first collapse
Radiative transfer plays a major role in the process of star formation. Many
simulations of gravitational collapse of a cold gas cloud followed by the
formation of a protostellar core use a grey treatment of radiative transfer
coupled to the hydrodynamics. However, dust opacities which dominate extinction
show large variations as a function of frequency. In this paper, we used
frequency-dependent radiative transfer to investigate the influence of the
opacity variations on the properties of Larson's first core. We used a
multigroup M1 moment model in a 1D radiation hydrodynamics code to simulate the
spherically symmetric collapse of a 1 solar mass cloud core. Monochromatic dust
opacities for five different temperature ranges were used to compute Planck and
Rosseland means inside each frequency group. The results are very consistent
with previous studies and only small differences were observed between the grey
and multigroup simulations. For a same central density, the multigroup
simulations tend to produce first cores with a slightly higher radius and
central temperature. We also performed simulations of the collapse of a 10 and
0.1 solar mass cloud, which showed the properties of the first core to be
independent of the initial cloud mass, with again no major differences between
grey and multigroup models. For Larson's first collapse, where temperatures
remain below 2000 K, the vast majority of the radiation energy lies in the IR
regime and the system is optically thick. In this regime, the grey
approximation does a good job reproducing the correct opacities, as long as
there are no large opacity variations on scales much smaller than the width of
the Planck function. The multigroup method is however expected to yield more
important differences in the later stages of the collapse when high energy (UV
and X-ray) radiation is present and matter and radiation are strongly
decoupled.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&
An uncertainty principle for star formation -- III. The characteristic emission time-scales of star formation rate tracers
We recently presented a new statistical method to constrain the physics of
star formation and feedback on the cloud scale by reconstructing the underlying
evolutionary timeline. However, by itself this new method only recovers the
relative durations of different evolutionary phases. To enable observational
applications, it therefore requires knowledge of an absolute 'reference
time-scale' to convert relative time-scales into absolute values. The logical
choice for this reference time-scale is the duration over which the star
formation rate (SFR) tracer is visible because it can be characterised using
stellar population synthesis (SPS) models. In this paper, we calibrate this
reference time-scale using synthetic emission maps of several SFR tracers,
generated by combining the output from a hydrodynamical disc galaxy simulation
with the SPS model SLUG2. We apply our statistical method to obtain
self-consistent measurements of each tracer's reference time-scale. These
include H and 12 ultraviolet (UV) filters (from GALEX, Swift, and
HST), which cover a wavelength range 150-350 nm. At solar metallicity, the
measured reference time-scales of H are Myr
with continuum subtraction, and 6-16 Myr without, where the time-scale
increases with filter width. For the UV filters we find 17-33 Myr, nearly
monotonically increasing with wavelength. The characteristic time-scale
decreases towards higher metallicities, as well as to lower star formation rate
surface densities, owing to stellar initial mass function sampling effects. We
provide fitting functions for the reference time-scale as a function of
metallicity, filter width, or wavelength, to enable observational applications
of our statistical method across a wide variety of galaxies.Comment: 24 pages, 18 figures, 7 tables (including Appendices); published in
MNRA
Radiation-Hydrodynamic Simulations of Collapse and Fragmentation in Massive Protostellar Cores
We simulate the early stages of the evolution of turbulent, virialized,
high-mass protostellar cores, with primary attention to how cores fragment, and
whether they form a small or large number of protostars. Our simulations use
the Orion adaptive mesh refinement code to follow the collapse from ~0.1 pc
scales to ~10 AU scales, for durations that cover the main fragmentation phase,
using three-dimensional gravito-radiation hydrodynamics. We find that for a
wide range of initial conditions radiation feedback from accreting protostars
inhibits the formation of fragments, so that the vast majority of the collapsed
mass accretes onto one or a few objects. Most of the fragmentation that does
occur takes place in massive, self-shielding disks. These are driven to
gravitational instability by rapid accretion, producing rapid mass and angular
momentum transport that allows most of the gas to accrete onto the central star
rather than forming fragments. In contrast, a control run using the same
initial conditions but an isothermal equation of state produces much more
fragmentation, both in and out of the disk. We conclude that massive cores with
observed properties are not likely to fragment into many stars, so that, at
least at high masses, the core mass function probably determines the stellar
initial mass function. Our results also demonstrate that simulations of massive
star forming regions that do not include radiative transfer, and instead rely
on a barotropic equation of state or optically thin heating and cooling curves,
are likely to produce misleading results.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures, emulateapj format. Accepted to ApJ. This
version has minor typo fixes and small additions, no significant changes.
Resolution of images severely degraded to fit within size limit. Download the
full paper from http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~krumholz/recent.htm
Hot high-mass accretion disk candidates
To better understand the physical properties of accretion disks in high-mass
star formation, we present a study of a 12 high-mass accretion disk candidates
observed at high spatial resolution with the Australia Telescope Compact Array
(ATCA) in the NH3 (4,4) and (5,5) lines. Almost all sources were detected in
NH3, directly associated with CH3OH Class II maser emission. From the remaining
eleven sources, six show clear signatures of rotation and/or infall motions.
These signatures vary from velocity gradients perpendicular to the outflows, to
infall signatures in absorption against ultracompact HII regions, to more
spherical infall signatures in emission. Although our spatial resolution is
~1000AU, we do not find clear Keplerian signatures in any of the sources.
Furthermore, we also do not find flattened structures. In contrast to this, in
several of the sources with rotational signatures, the spatial structure is
approximately spherical with sizes exceeding 10^4 AU, showing considerable
clumpy sub-structure at even smaller scales. This implies that on average
typical Keplerian accretion disks -- if they exist as expected -- should be
confined to regions usually smaller than 1000AU. It is likely that these disks
are fed by the larger-scale rotating envelope structure we observe here.
Furthermore, we do detect 1.25cm continuum emission in most fields of view.Comment: 21 pages, 32 figures, accepted for ApJS. A high-resolution version
can be found at http://www.mpia.de/homes/beuther/papers.htm
On the physical mechanisms governing the cloud lifecycle in the Central Molecular Zone of the Milky Way
We apply an analytic theory for environmentally-dependent molecular cloud lifetimes to the Central Molecular Zone of the Milky Way. Within this theory, the cloud lifetime in the Galactic centre is obtained by combining the time-scales for gravitational instability, galactic shear, epicyclic perturbations and cloud-cloud collisions. We find that at galactocentric radii ∼45-120 pc, corresponding to the location of the ‘100-pc stream’, cloud evolution is primarily dominated by gravitational collapse, with median cloud lifetimes between 1.4 and 3.9 Myr. At all other galactocentric radii, galactic shear dominates the cloud lifecycle, and we predict that molecular clouds are dispersed on time-scales between 3 and 9 Myr, without a significant degree of star formation. Along the outer edge of the 100-pc stream, between radii of 100 and 120 pc, the time-scales for epicyclic perturbations and gravitational free-fall are similar. This similarity of time-scales lends support to the hypothesis that, depending on the orbital geometry and timing of the orbital phase, cloud collapse and star formation in the 100-pc stream may be triggered by a tidal compression at pericentre. Based on the derived time-scales, this should happen in approximately 20 per cent of all accretion events onto the 100-pc stream
CARMA Survey Toward Infrared-bright Nearby Galaxies (STING) II: Molecular Gas Star Formation Law and Depletion Time Across the Blue Sequence
We present an analysis of the relationship between molecular gas and current
star formation rate surface density at sub-kpc and kpc scales in a sample of 14
nearby star-forming galaxies. Measuring the relationship in the bright, high
molecular gas surface density (\Shtwo\gtrsim20 \msunpc) regions of the disks
to minimize the contribution from diffuse extended emission, we find an
approximately linear relation between molecular gas and star formation rate
surface density, \nmol\sim0.96\pm0.16, with a molecular gas depletion time
\tdep\sim2.30\pm1.32 Gyr. We show that, in the molecular regions of our
galaxies there are no clear correlations between \tdep\ and the free-fall and
effective Jeans dynamical times throughout the sample. We do not find strong
trends in the power-law index of the spatially resolved molecular gas star
formation law or the molecular gas depletion time across the range of galactic
stellar masses sampled (\mstar \msun). There is a
trend, however, in global measurements that is particularly marked for low mass
galaxies. We suggest this trend is probably due to the low surface brightness
CO, and it is likely associated with changes in CO-to-H2 conversion factor.Comment: To appear in ApJ, December 2011; 17 pages; 8 figure
Which feedback mechanisms dominate in the high-pressure environment of the Central Molecular Zone?
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Final published version available at https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2719.Supernovae (SNe) dominate the energy and momentum budget of stellar feedback, but the efficiency with which they couple to the interstellar medium (ISM) depends strongly on how effectively early, pre-SN feedback clears dense gas from star-forming regions. There are observational constraints on the magnitudes and timescales of early stellar feedback in low ISM pressure environments, yet no such constraints exist for more cosmologically typical high ISM pressure environments. In this paper, we determine the mechanisms dominating the expansion of H ii regions as a function of size-scale and evolutionary time within the high-pressure (P/kB ∼ 107 − 8 K cm−3) environment in the inner 100 pc of the Milky Way. We calculate the thermal pressure from the warm ionised (PHII; 104 K) gas, direct radiation pressure (Pdir), and dust processed radiation pressure (PIR). We find that (1) Pdir dominates the expansion on small scales and at early times (0.01-0.1 pc; 0.1 pc; >1 Myr); (3) during the first ≲ 1 Myr of growth, but not thereafter, either PIR or stellar wind pressure likely make a comparable contribution. Despite the high confining pressure of the environment, natal star-forming gas is efficiently cleared to radii of several pc within ∼ 2 Myr, i.e. before the first SNe explode. This ‘pre-processing’ means that subsequent SNe will explode into low density gas, so their energy and momentum will efficiently couple to the ISM. We find the H ii regions expand to a radius of ∼ 3pc, at which point they have internal pressures equal with the surrounding external pressure. A comparison with H ii regions in lower pressure environments shows that the maximum size of all H ii regions is set by pressure equilibrium with the ambient ISM.Peer reviewe
The linewidth-size relationship in the dense ISM of the Central Molecular Zone
The linewidth (sigma) - size (R) relationship has been extensively measured
and analysed, in both the local ISM and in nearby normal galaxies. Generally, a
power-law describes the relationship well with an index ranging from 0.2-0.6,
now referred to as one of "Larson's Relationships." The nature of turbulence
and star formation is considered to be intimately related to these
relationships, so evaluating the sigma-R correlations in various environments
is important for developing a comprehensive understanding of the ISM. We
measure the sigma-R relationship in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the
Galactic Centre using spectral line observations of the high density tracers
N2H+, HCN, H13CN, and HCO+. We use dendrograms, which map the hierarchical
nature of the position-position-velocity (PPV) data, to compute sigma and R of
contiguous structures. The dispersions range from ~2-30 km/s in structures
spanning sizes 2-40 pc, respectively. By performing Bayesian inference, we show
that a power-law with exponent 0.3-1.1 can reasonably describe the sigma-R
trend. We demonstrate that the derived sigma-R relationship is independent of
the locations in the PPV dataset where sigma and R are measured. The uniformity
in the sigma-R relationship suggests turbulence in the CMZ is driven on the
large scales beyond >30 pc. We compare the CMZ sigma-R relationship to that
measured in the Galactic molecular cloud Perseus. The exponents between the two
systems are similar, suggestive of a connection between the turbulent
properties within a cloud to its ambient medium. Yet, the velocity dispersion
in the CMZ is systematically higher, resulting in a coefficient that is nearly
five times larger. The systematic enhancement of turbulent velocities may be
due to the combined effects of increased star formation activity, larger
densities, and higher pressures relative to the local ISM.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA
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