Supersonic Cloud Collision-II

TL;DR

This study investigates the dynamics of moderately supersonic molecular cloud collisions through SPH simulations, focusing on how temperature and velocity influence gas slab stability and potential star cluster formation.

Contribution

It introduces new simulations of cloud collisions at moderate velocities, analyzing the effects of thermodynamics and initial conditions on gas slab evolution and fragmentation.

Findings

Warmer gas slabs are less likely to fragment into stars.

Pressure confined slabs can become Jeans unstable under certain conditions.

Pre-collision velocity and temperature critically affect cloud evolution.

Abstract

In this second paper of the sequel of two papers, we further investigate the problem of molecular cloud (MC) collision. Anathpindika (2009) (hereafter paper I) considered highly supersonic cloud collisions and examined the effect of bending and shearing instabilities on the shocked gas slab. We now consider moderately supersonic cloud collisions (precollision cloud velocities of order 1.2 km s$^{-1}$ to 2.4 km s$^{-1}$). In the current paper, we present five SPH simulations of fast head-on and/or off-centre cloud collisions to study the evolution of ram pressure confined gas slabs. The relevant thermodynamics in the problem is simplified by adopting a simple barytropic equation of state. We explore the parameter space by varying the pre-collision velocity and the temperature of the post collision gas slab. The temperature in a pressure compressed gas slab is crucial to its dynamical evolution. The pressure confined gas slabs become Jeans unstable if the average sound crossing time, $t_{cr}$, of putative clumps condensing out of them, is much larger than their free fall time, $t_{ff}$. Self gravitating clumps may spawn multiple/larger $N$-body star clusters. Warmer gas slabs are unlikely to fragment and may end up as diffuse gas clouds.