Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.9207h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #92.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.887
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The formation of molecular clouds in supersonic accumulating flows (SAFs) of atomic hydrogen offers a natural mechanism to provide the resulting clouds with the observed density and velocity structure, including the broad, "turbulent" nonthermal line widths. A combination of strong thermal and dynamical instabilities leads to the rapid fragmentation of the SAFs, and to the generation of small-scale high density fragments of cold neutral gas, whose mass spectrum is similar to the observed mass spectrum of molecular cores. This suggests that thermal fragmentation may be the dominant process setting the core mass spectrum, rather than self-gravity. The immediate generation of cold fragments allows the observationally mandated rapid onset of star formation even during the assembly of the large-scale cloud. Dynamical instabilities will deflect the incoming gas streams towards "focal points", allowing the rapid formation of massive cores of a few 100 solar masses at the edges of the young molecular cloud. The peculiar locations will affect the role feedback plays for the parental cloud's evolution.
Burkert Andreas
Devriendt Julien E. G.
Hartmann Lee
Heitsch Fabian
Slyz Adrianne D.
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