Collapse and fragmentation of Gaussian barotropic protostellar clouds

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to explore how Gaussian molecular clouds collapse and fragment, revealing the influence of thermodynamic transition points and initial perturbations on star system formation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of the critical density in the thermodynamic model on cloud fragmentation and star formation outcomes, using detailed numerical simulations.

Findings

Lower critical density delays collapse and promotes fragmentation.

Higher initial perturbations accelerate collapse, sometimes leading to single star formation.

Transition from isothermal to adiabatic regimes affects the number of resulting stellar objects.

Abstract

We examine the problem of the collapse and fragmentation of molecular clouds with a Gaussian density distribution with high resolution, double precision numerical simulations using the GADGET-2 code. To describe the thermodynamic properties of the cloud during the collapse -to mimic the rise of temperature predicted by radiative transfer- we use a barotropic equation of state that introduces a critical density to separate the isothermal and adiabatic regimes. We discuss the effects of this critical density in the formation of multiple systems. We confirm the tendency found for Plummer and Gaussian models that if the collapse changes from isothermal to adiabatic at earlier times that occurs for the models with a lower critical density, the collapse is slowed down, and this enhances the fragments' change to survive. However, this effect happens up to a threshold density below which single systems tend to form. On the other hand, by setting a bigger initial perturbation amplitude, the collapse is faster and in some cases a final single object is formed.