Collapse of Turbulent Cores and Reconnection Diffusion

TL;DR

This paper investigates how turbulence-induced magnetic reconnection diffusion facilitates magnetic flux removal in molecular cloud cores, enabling star formation, and examines the conditions under which cores become supercritical and collapse.

Contribution

It extends previous models by including spherical gravitational potentials and gas self-gravity, demonstrating RD's efficiency in realistic cloud conditions and its role in core collapse.

Findings

RD can make subcritical clouds supercritical, promoting collapse.

Supercritical cores develop helical magnetic fields, matching observations.

Turbulent reconnection diffusion coefficients are significantly larger than numerical diffusion.

Abstract

For a molecular cloud clump to form stars some transport of magnetic flux is required from the denser, inner regions to the outer regions of the cloud, otherwise this can prevent the collapse. Fast magnetic reconnection which takes place in the presence of turbulence can induce a process of reconnection diffusion (RD). Extending earlier numerical studies of reconnection diffusion in cylindrical clouds, we consider more realistic clouds with spherical gravitational potentials and also account for the effects of the gas self-gravity. We demonstrate that within our setup RD is efficient. We have also identified the conditions under which RD becomes strong enough to make an initially subcritical cloud clump supercritical and induce its collapse. Our results indicate that the formation of a supercritical core is regulated by a complex interplay between gravity, self-gravity, the magnetic field strength and nearly transonic and trans-Alfv\'enic turbulence, confirming that RD is able to remove magnetic flux from collapsing clumps, but only a few of them become nearly critical or supercritical, sub-Alfv\'enic cores, which is consistent with the observations. Besides, we have found that the supercritical cores built up in our simulations develop a predominantly helical magnetic field geometry which is also consistent with observations. Finally, we have evaluated the effective values of the turbulent reconnection diffusion coefficient and found that they are much larger than the numerical diffusion, especially for initially trans-Alfv\'enic clouds, ensuring that the detected magnetic flux removal is due to to the action of the RD rather than to numerical diffusivity.