Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Aug 2005
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005jrasc..99r.132t&link_type=abstract
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 99, No. 4, p.132
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
4
Scientific paper
One of the long-standing problems in star formation is how a giant molecular cloud (GMC) fragments into stars, and why these stars are not all the same. A scenario that has the fragmentation driven by turbulent motions in the GMC has had great success in reproducing the observed mass distribution of stars. We present a series of numerical simulations of MHD turbulence with initial conditions similar to that found in the centre of a cloud like Orion. Our initial conditions are determined from two primary parameters, one controlling the strength of gravity (the number of Jeans masses on the grid), and one controlling the strength of the magnetic field (the ratio of the gas pressure to magnetic pressure). We identify whether individual cores are bound via the full virial equation, and calculate the distribution functions for the core masses and specific angular momenta. We find that in order to produce a star cluster with cores that are well-magnetized and that have a core mass spectrum resembling the IMF, we find that a large number (~30) of Jeans masses must be initially present, which argues for a rapid cloud/cluster formation.
Pudritz Ralph
Tilley David
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