Collapse and Fragmentation of Magnetic Molecular Cloud Cores

Details Collapse and Fragmentation of Magnetic Molecular Cloud Cores Collapse and Fragmentation of Magnetic Molecular Cloud Cores

Dec 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999sf99.proc..136b&link_type=abstract

Star Formation 1999, Proceedings of Star Formation 1999, held in Nagoya, Japan, June 21 - 25, 1999, Editor: T. Nakamoto, Nobeyam

Computer Science

Scientific paper

Fragmentation during gravitational collapse has been reasonably successful at explaining the formation of binary and multiple stars. Provided that the Jeans condition is obeyed, fragmentation calculations can lead to an accurate description of the formation of binary protostars. However, nearly all three dimensional collapse calculations have ignored the effects of magnetic fields, whereas magnetic fields are generally regarded as a dominant force in molecular clouds. Three dimensional models that allow for magnetic field loss by ambipolar diffusion have now shown that fragmentation is possible for initially prolate, rotating, magnetically-supported cloud cores. The main effect of the magnetic field is to delay the collapse phase. Once collapse begins, a rotating cloud can fragment into a binary protostar, provided that its initial ratio of rotational to gravitational energy (β) exceeds about 0.01. Because the critical value of β ~0.01 falls roughly at the median of the distribution of rotational energies for pre-collapse dense cloud cores, these models provide a plausible explanation for why about half of all primary stars have a binary companion: the initial amount of rotation is a key quantity.

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