Diagnostics of the molecular component of PDRs with mechanical heating. II: line intensities and ratios

CO observations in active galactic nuclei and star-bursts reveal high kinetic temperatures. Those environments are thought to be very turbulent due to dynamic phenomena such as outflows and high supernova rates. We investigate the effect of mechanical heating (MH) on atomic fine-structure and molecular lines, and their ratios. We use those ratios as a diagnostic to constrain the amount of MH in an object and also study its significance on estimating the H2 mass. Equilibrium PDRs models were used to compute the thermal and chemical balance for the clouds. The equilibria were solved for numerically using the optimized version of the Leiden PDR-XDR code. Large velocity gradient calculations were done as post-processing on the output of the PDR models using RADEX. High-J CO line ratios are very sensitive to MH. Emission becomes at least one order of magnitude brighter in clouds with n~10^5~cm^-3 and a star formation rate of 1 Solar Mass per year (corresponding to a MH rate of 2 * 10^-19 erg cm^-3 s^-1). Emission of low-J CO lines is not as sensitive to MH, but they do become brighter in response to MH. Generally, for all of the lines we considered, MH increases excitation temperatures and decreases the optical depth at the line centre. Hence line ratios are also affected, strongly in some cases. Ratios involving HCN are a good diagnostic for MH, such as HCN(1-0)/CO(1-0) and HCN(1-0)/HCO^+(1-0). Both ratios increase by a factor 3 or more for a MH equivalent to > 5 percent of the surface heating, as opposed to pure PDRs. The first major conclusion is that low-J to high-J intensity ratios will yield a good estimate of the MH rate (as opposed to only low-J ratios). The second one is that the MH rate should be taken into account when determining A_V or equivalently N_H, and consequently the cloud mass. Ignoring MH will also lead to large errors in density and radiation field estimates.Comment: 38 pages, to appear in A&

Face-on accretion onto a protoplanetary disc

Globular clusters (GCs) are known to harbor multiple stellar populations. To explain these observations Bastian et al. suggested a scenario in which a second population is formed by the accretion of enriched material onto the low-mass stars in the initial GC population. The idea is that the low-mass, pre-main sequence stars sweep up gas expelled by the massive stars of the same generation into their protoplanetary disc as they move through the GC core. We perform simulations with 2 different smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes to investigate if a low-mass star surrounded by a protoplanetary disc can accrete the amount of enriched material required in this scenario. We focus on the gas loading rate onto the disc and star as well as on the lifetime of the disc. We find that the gas loading rate is a factor of 2 smaller than the geometric rate, because the effective cross section of the disc is smaller than its surface area. The loading rate is consistent for both codes, irrespective of resolution. The disc gains mass in the high resolution runs, but loses angular momentum on a time scale of 10^4 yrs. Two effects determine the loss of (specific) angular momentum in our simulations: 1) continuous ram pressure stripping and 2) accretion of material with no azimuthal angular momentum. Our study and previous work suggest that the former, dominant process is mainly caused by numerical rather than physical effects, while the latter is not. The latter process causes the disc to become more compact, increasing the surface density profile at smaller radii. The disc size is determined in the first place by the ram pressure when the flow first hits the disc. Further evolution is governed by the decrease in the specific angular momentum of the disc. We conclude that the size and lifetime of the disc are probably not sufficient to accrete the amount of mass required in Bastian et al.'s scenario.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 15 pages, 5 figures, 4 table

The Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment

We present the open source Astrophysical Multi-purpose Software Environment (AMUSE, www.amusecode.org), a component library for performing astrophysical simulations involving different physical domains and scales. It couples existing codes within a Python framework based on a communication layer using MPI. The interfaces are standardized for each domain and their implementation based on MPI guarantees that the whole framework is well-suited for distributed computation. It includes facilities for unit handling and data storage. Currently it includes codes for gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, hydrodynamics and radiative transfer. Within each domain the interfaces to the codes are as similar as possible. We describe the design and implementation of AMUSE, as well as the main components and community codes currently supported and we discuss the code interactions facilitated by the framework. Additionally, we demonstrate how AMUSE can be used to resolve complex astrophysical problems by presenting example applications.Comment: 23 pages, 25 figures, accepted for A&

Periodic bursts of Star Formation in Irregular Galaxies

We present N-body/SPH simulations of the evolution of an isolated dwarf galaxy including a detailed model for the ISM, star formation and stellar feedback. Depending on the strength of the feedback, the modelled dwarf galaxy shows periodic or quasi-periodic bursts of star formation of moderate strength. The period of the variations is related to the dynamical timescale, of the order of $1.5~10^8$ yr. We show that the results of these simulations are in good agreement with recent detailed observations of dwarf irregulars (dIrr) and that the peculiar kinematic and morphological properties of these objects,as revealed by high resolution HI studies, are fully reproduced. We discuss these results in the context of recent surveys of dwarf galaxies and point out that if the star formation pattern of our model galaxy is typical for dwarf irregulars this could explain the scatter of observed properties of dwarf galaxies. Specifically, we show that the time sampled distribution of the ratio between the instanteneous star formation rate (SFR) and the mean SFR is similar to that distribution in observed sample of dwarf galaxies.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for A&

Exploring Community Preparedness for Complex Disaster: A Case Study in Cilegon (Banten Province in Indonesia)

This study aims at examining how local communities in City of Cilegon (Banten province in Indonesia) consider ‘complex disasters’, and clarifying their subjective perceptions. The present research is considered as the first step in our comprehensive research design beyond a specific case study. The nuclear accidents in the GreatEast Japan Earthquake and the huge flood in Thailand provide lessons that natural disasters can cause catastrophic influences on industries and they generate cascading effects and damages. We define such complicated phenomena as ‘complex disasters’ in this article. Cilegon is potentially exposed to such complex disasters because it has natural disaster risks (among others, the Krakatau volcano sits adjacent to it, andrecalling historical earthquakes and tsunami) and industrial disaster risks (a lot of heavy industry facilities including chemical ones), and these two types of risks can be combined and made reality. A ‘model for the communication of risk’ developed by Rodriguez et al. (2007) is adopted as an analytical framework in this study. The model predicts involvement of many types of actors and can be considered as an adequate framework for our study. This study mainly focused on one industrial gas facility of Pertamina, a state-owned energy company, and its surrounding community (Lebak Gede village) in Cilegon. The qualitative methodologies were used in this study: One focused group discussion (FGD) and three key informant interviews were implemented by the authors. The participants of the FGD were twelve leaders of the neighborhood associations (locally described as ‘RT’ and ‘RW’ in Indonesian acronym) closest to the Pertamina facility (two RW leaders and ten RT leaders). The key informant interviews were separately and additionally conducted with a head of a village, a neighborhoodassociation leader (this leader was different from the FGD participants) and a local forum entity, in order to reinforce observations at the FGD. Our survey observed that involvement of the Indonesia Power, a subsidiary of state-owned electricity company whose facilities adjacent to Petamina’s facility, as one of the industry actors, local governmental agencies and the Indonesian Red Cross. On the other hand, we did not clearly identify any clear involvement of the educational institutions and the mass media, although the model of Rodriguez et al. (2007) estimates their engagement. People in Lebak Gede village have already expected potential threats by large-scale natural disasters. Furthermore, they recognize that such disasters give influence on the industrial facilities and the consequences are catastrophic. Although local residents in Lebak Gede village had a lot of experiences of industrial accidents in the past, these experiences did not initiate a significant mindset change for a more organized preparedness. Instead, they paid larger attentions to floods as their preparedness priority. This study adopted the qualitative method for gathering specific information, but more comprehensive research can contribute to verify preparedness and risk perception on the complex disasters. Although this article selectively dealt with one village (Lebak Gede village) and its preparedness and perception, the findings is to be further clarified in detail for generalizing community preparedness for the complex disasters. Keywords: community, risk perception, natural disaster risk, industrial disaster risk, complex disaster, Cilego

Star Formation in the vicinity of Nuclear Black Holes: Young Stellar Objects close to Sgr A*

It is often assumed that the strong gravitational field of a super-massive black hole disrupts an adjacent molecular cloud preventing classical star formation in the deep potential well of the black hole. Yet, young stars have been observed across the entire nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way including the region close ($<$0.5~pc) to the central black hole, Sgr A*. Here, we focus particularly on small groups of young stars, such as IRS 13N located 0.1 pc away from Sgr A*, which is suggested to contain about five embedded massive young stellar objects ($<$1 Myr). We perform three dimensional hydrodynamical simulations to follow the evolution of molecular clumps orbiting about a $4\times10^6~M_{\odot}$ black hole, to constrain the formation and the physical conditions of such groups. The molecular clumps in our models assumed to be isothermal containing 100 $M_{\odot}$ in $<$0.2 pc radius. Such molecular clumps exist in the circumnuclear disk of the Galaxy. In our highly eccentrically orbiting clump, the strong orbital compression of the clump along the orbital radius vector and perpendicular to the orbital plane causes the gas densities to increase to values higher than the tidal density of Sgr A*, which are required for star formation. Additionally, we speculate that the infrared excess source G2/DSO approaching Sgr A* on a highly eccentric orbit could be associated with a dust enshrouded star that may have been formed recently through the mechanism supported by our models.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA