Low-Metallicity Star Formation : Prestellar Collapse and Protostellar Accretion in the Spherical Symmetry

TL;DR

This study investigates how metallicity influences prestellar collapse and protostellar accretion, revealing a critical metallicity threshold for fragmentation and assessing the impact of protostellar radiation on star formation.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified chemical network for collapse simulations across metallicities and evaluates fragmentation and accretion processes in low-metallicity environments.

Findings

Critical metallicity for fragmentation is 10^{-5}Z_sun.

Lower metallicity results in higher temperatures during collapse.

Protostellar radiation has negligible effects for metallicities below 10^{-2}Zsun.

Abstract

The collapse of dense cores with different metallicities is studied by hydrodynamical calculations coupled with detailed chemical and radiative processes. For this purpose, we construct a simple chemical network with non-equilibrium reactions among 15 chemical species, which reproduces the abundance of important molecular coolants by more detailed network very well. The evolution is followed until the formation of a hydrostatic protostar at the center. In a lower-metallicity gas cloud, the temperature during the collapse remains high owing to less efficient cooling. Using the temperature evolution at the center as a function the density, we discuss the possibility of fragmentation during the dust-cooling phase. The critical metallicity for the fragmentation is 10^{-5}Z_sun assuming moderate elongation of the cloud cores at the onset of this phase. From the density and velocity distributions at the time of protostar formation, we evaluate the mass accretion rate in the subsequent accretion phase. Using these accretion rates, we also calculate the evolution of the protostars under the assumption of stationary accretion flow. Finally, we discuss possible suppression of fragmentation by heating of the ambient gas by protostellar radiation, which is considered important in the contemporary star formation. We argue that it is negligible for <10^{-2}Zsun.