Numerical and semi-analytic core mass distributions in supersonic isothermal turbulence

TL;DR

This study examines how different turbulence forcing methods affect the mass distribution of gravitationally unstable cores in supersonic isothermal turbulence, combining simulations and semi-analytic models to understand core formation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of solenoidal versus compressive forcing on core mass distributions and validates semi-analytic models against simulation data.

Findings

Compressive forcing yields a shallower high-mass slope.

Mass distributions depend on the Jeans length and simulation resolution.

Semi-analytic models closely match simulation results when cores are well-resolved.

Abstract

We investigate the influence of the turbulence forcing on the mass distributions of gravitationally unstable cores by postprocessing data from simulations of non-selfgravitating isothermal supersonic turbulence with varying resolution. In one set of simulations solenoidal forcing is applied, while the second set uses purely compressive forcing to excite turbulent motions. From the resulting density field, we compute the mass distribution of gravitationally unstable cores by means of a clump-finding algorithm. Using the time-averaged probability density functions of the mass density, semi-analytic mass distributions are calculated from analytical theories. We apply stability criteria that are based on the Bonnor-Ebert mass resulting from the thermal pressure and from the sum of thermal and turbulent pressure. Although there are uncertainties in the application of the clump-finding algorithm, we find systematic differences in the mass distributions obtained from solenoidal and compressive forcing. Compressive forcing produces a shallower slope in the high-mass power-law regime compared to solenoidal forcing. The mass distributions also depend on the Jeans length resulting from the choice of the mass in the computational box, which is freely scalable for non-selfgravitating isothermal turbulence. Provided that all cores are numerically resolved and most cores are small compared to the length scale of the forcing, the normalised core mass distributions are found to be close to the semi-analytic models. Especially for the high-mass tails, the Hennebelle-Chabrier theory implies that the additional support due to turbulent pressure is important.