Decaying turbulence in molecular clouds: how does it affect filament networks and star formation?

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Dhandha, Jiten, Faes, Zoe, Smith, Rowan J.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Dhandha, Jiten
Faes, Zoe
Smith, Rowan J.
author_facet Dhandha, Jiten
Faes, Zoe
Smith, Rowan J.
contents The fragmentation of gas to form stars in molecular clouds is intrinsically linked to the turbulence within them. These internal motions are set at the birth of the cloud and may vary with galactic environment and as the cloud evolves. In this paper, we introduce a new suite of 15 high-resolution 3D molecular cloud simulations using the moving mesh code AREPO to investigate the role of different decaying turbulent modes (mixed, compressive and solenoidal) and virial ratios on the evolution of a $10^4\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ molecular cloud. We find that diffuse regions maintain a strong relic of the initial turbulent mode, whereas the initial gravitational potential dominates dense regions. Solenoidal seeded models thus give rise to a diffuse cloud with filament-like morphology, and an excess of brown dwarf mass fragments. Compressive seeded models have an early onset of star-formation, centrally condensed morphologies and a higher accretion rate, along with overbound clouds. 3D filaments identified using DisPerSE and analyzed through a new Python toolkit we develop and make publicly available with this work called FIESTA, show no clear trend in lengths, masses and densities between initial turbulent modes. Overbound clouds, however, produce more filaments and thus have more mass in filaments. The hubs formed by converging filaments are found to favour star-formation, with surprisingly similar mass distributions independent of the number of filaments connecting the hub.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_12428
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Decaying turbulence in molecular clouds: how does it affect filament networks and star formation?
Dhandha, Jiten
Faes, Zoe
Smith, Rowan J.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
The fragmentation of gas to form stars in molecular clouds is intrinsically linked to the turbulence within them. These internal motions are set at the birth of the cloud and may vary with galactic environment and as the cloud evolves. In this paper, we introduce a new suite of 15 high-resolution 3D molecular cloud simulations using the moving mesh code AREPO to investigate the role of different decaying turbulent modes (mixed, compressive and solenoidal) and virial ratios on the evolution of a $10^4\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ molecular cloud. We find that diffuse regions maintain a strong relic of the initial turbulent mode, whereas the initial gravitational potential dominates dense regions. Solenoidal seeded models thus give rise to a diffuse cloud with filament-like morphology, and an excess of brown dwarf mass fragments. Compressive seeded models have an early onset of star-formation, centrally condensed morphologies and a higher accretion rate, along with overbound clouds. 3D filaments identified using DisPerSE and analyzed through a new Python toolkit we develop and make publicly available with this work called FIESTA, show no clear trend in lengths, masses and densities between initial turbulent modes. Overbound clouds, however, produce more filaments and thus have more mass in filaments. The hubs formed by converging filaments are found to favour star-formation, with surprisingly similar mass distributions independent of the number of filaments connecting the hub.
title Decaying turbulence in molecular clouds: how does it affect filament networks and star formation?
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12428