The Effect of Irradiation on the Jeans Mass in Fragmenting Self-Gravitating Protostellar Discs

TL;DR

This paper investigates how stellar and background irradiation influence the fragmentation of self-gravitating protostellar discs, revealing that irradiation generally suppresses fragmentation at low accretion rates but allows it at higher rates, affecting the resulting star masses.

Contribution

It extends previous analysis by incorporating irradiation effects into the Jeans mass calculation within spiral structures of self-gravitating discs, clarifying conditions for fragmentation.

Findings

Irradiation suppresses fragmentation at low accretion rates.

Fragmentation can still occur at high accretion rates despite irradiation.

Irradiation increases the Jeans mass, favoring formation of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars.

Abstract

When a self-gravitating disc is subject to irradiation, its propensity to fragmentation will be affected. The strength of self-gravitating disc stresses is expected to dictate disc fragmentation: as the strength of these torques typically decrease with increasing sound speed, it is reasonable to assume, to first-order, that disc fragmentation is suppressed when compared to the non-irradiated case, although previous work has shown that the details are complicated by the source of the irradiation. We expand on previous analysis of the Jeans mass inside spiral structures in self-gravitating discs, incorporating the effects of stellar irradiation and background irradiation. If irradiation is present, fragmentation is suppressed for marginally unstable discs at low accretion rates (compared to the no-irradiation case), but these lower accretion rates correspond to higher mass discs. Fragmentation can still occur for high accretion rates, but is consequently suppressed at lower disc surface densities, and the subsequent Jeans mass is boosted. These results further bolster the consensus that, without subsequent fragment disruption or mass loss, the gravitational instability is more likely to form brown dwarfs and low-mass stars than gas giant planets.