Collapse in Self-gravitating Turbulent Fluids

TL;DR

This paper uses high-resolution simulations to study the collapse of self-gravitating turbulent gas, revealing flow structure changes, density attractors, and star formation rates consistent with observations and analytical models.

Contribution

It provides detailed simulation results on flow dynamics, density evolution, and star formation rates in self-gravitating turbulent fluids, extending previous analytical and numerical work.

Findings

Flow changes at disk radius and stellar mass radius

Density evolves to a fixed attractor in certain regions

Star mass grows as t^2 over time

Abstract

Motivated by the nonlinear star formation efficiency found in recent numerical simulations by a number of workers, we perform high-resolution adaptive mesh refinement simulations of star formation in self-gravitating turbulently driven gas. As we follow the collapse of this gas, we find that the character of the flow changes at two radii, the disk radius $r_d$, and the radius $r_*$ where the enclosed gas mass exceeds the stellar mass. Accretion starts at large scales and works inwards. In line with recent analytical work, we find that the density evolves to a fixed attractor, $\rho(r,t ) \rightarrow \rho(r)$, for $r_d<r<r_*$; mass flows through this structure onto a sporadically gravitationally unstable disk, and from thence onto the star. In the bulk of the simulation box we find that the random motions $v_T \sim r^p$ with $p \sim 0.5$, in agreement with Larson's size-linewidth relation. In the vicinity of massive star forming regions we find $ p \sim 0.2-0.3$, as seen in observations. For $r<r_*$, $v_T$ increases inward, with $p=-1/2$. Finally, we find that the total stellar mass $M_*(t)\sim t^2$ in line with previous numerical and analytic work that suggests a nonlinear rate of star formation.