Stellar, Brown Dwarf, and Multiple Star Properties from Hydrodynamical Simulations of Star Cluster Formation

TL;DR

This study uses large hydrodynamical simulations to analyze the statistical properties of stars, brown dwarfs, and multiple systems, closely matching many observed stellar characteristics and providing new insights into star cluster formation.

Contribution

It presents the largest hydrodynamical simulation resolving down to the opacity limit, offering detailed statistical data on star and brown dwarf formation and properties.

Findings

Hydrodynamical simulations reproduce observed binary properties.

VLM binary frequency aligns with observational surveys (~20%).

VLM binaries evolve from wide, unequal-mass to close, equal-mass systems.

Abstract

We report the statistical properties of stars, brown dwarfs and multiple systems obtained from the largest hydrodynamical simulation of star cluster formation to date that resolves masses down to the opacity limit for fragmentation (a few Jupiter masses). The simulation is essentially identical to that of Bate, Bonnell & Bromm except that the initial molecular cloud is larger and more massive. It produces more than 1250 stars and brown dwarfs, providing unprecedented statistical information that can be compared with observational surveys. We find that hydrodynamical/sink particle simulations can reproduce many of the observed stellar properties very well. Binarity as a function of primary mass, the frequency of very-low-mass (VLM) binaries, general trends for the separation and mass ratio distributions of binaries, and the relative orbital orientations of triples systems are all in reasonable agreement with observations. We also examine the radial variations of binarity, velocity dispersion, and mass function in the resulting stellar cluster and the distributions of disc truncation radii due to dynamical interactions. For VLM binaries, we find that their frequency when using small accretion radii and gravitational softening is similar to that expected from observational surveys (approximately 20 percent). We also find that VLM binaries evolve from wide, unequal-mass systems towards close equal-mass systems as they form. The two main deficiencies of the calculations are that they over produce brown dwarfs relative to stars and that there are too few unequal mass binaries with K and G-dwarf primaries. [Abridged]