Radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of HII regions and their associated PDRs in turbulent molecular clouds

Details Radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of HII regions and their associated PDRs in turbulent molecular clouds Radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of HII regions and their associated PDRs in turbulent molecular clouds

2011-01-28

arxiv.org/abs/1101.5510v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

23 pages, 23 figures (11 in color), accepted by MNRAS. Minor revisions to match accepted version. Animations at http://youtu

Scientific paper

We present the results of radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the expansion of HII regions and surrounding photodissociation regions in turbulent, magnetised, molecular clouds on scales of up to 4 parsecs, including the effects of ionising and non-ionising ultraviolet radiation and x rays from young star clusters. We find that HII region expansion reduces the disordered component of the B field, imposing a large-scale order on the field around its border. The field in the neutral gas lies along the ionisation front, while the field in the ionised gas tends to be perpendicular to this. The highest pressure compressed neutral/molecular gas is driven towards approximate equipartition between thermal/magnetic/turbulent energy densities, whereas lower pressure neutral/molecular gas divides into quiescent, magnetically dominated regions, and, on the other hand, turbulent, demagnetised regions. The ionised gas shows approximate thermal/turbulent equipartition, but with magnetic energy densities 1 to 3 orders of magnitude lower. A high velocity dispersion (approx 8 km/s) is maintained in the ionised gas throughout our simulations, despite the mean expansion velocity being significantly lower. The B field does not significantly brake the HII region expansion on the length and timescales accessible to our simulations, but it does tend to suppress the small-scale fragmentation and radiation-driven implosion of neutral/molecular gas that forms globules and pillars at the edge of the HII region. However, the relative luminosity of ionising and non-ionising radiation has a much larger influence than the presence or absence of the B field. When the radiation field is relatively soft (as in the case of a lower mass cluster, with earliest spectral type of B0.5), then fragmentation is less vigorous and a thick, relatively smooth PDR forms. Movies available at http://youtube.com/user/divBequals0

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