On the fragmentation of filaments in a molecular cloud simulation

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze the early evolution and fragmentation of filaments in molecular clouds, revealing that their line masses increase before reaching critical stability and highlighting the influence of surrounding cloud dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of filament evolution in self-consistently formed molecular clouds, challenging simple analytical models and emphasizing the importance of simulation-based approaches.

Findings

Filaments' line masses increase after self-gravity onset.

Fragments appear when line masses are below the critical value.

Column density maps may underestimate filament line masses.

Abstract

The fragmentation of filaments in molecular clouds has attracted a lot of attention as there seems to be a relation between the evolution of filaments and star formation. The study of the fragmentation process has been motivated by simple analytical models. However, only a few comprehensive studies have analysed the evolution of filaments using numerical simulations where the filaments form self-consistently as part of molecular clouds. We address the early evolution of pc-scale filaments that form within individual clouds. We focus on three questions: How do the line masses of filaments evolve? How and when do the filaments fragment? How does the fragmentation relate to the line masses of the filaments? We examine three simulated molecular clouds formed in kpc-scale numerical simulations performed with the FLASH code. We compare the properties of the identified filaments with the predictions of analytic filament stability models. The line masses and mass fraction enclosed in the identified filaments increase continuously after the onset of self-gravity. The first fragments appear early when the line masses lie well below the critical line mass of Ostriker's hydrostatic equilibrium solution. The average line masses of filaments identified in 3D density cubes increases far more quickly than those identified in 2D column density maps. Our results suggest that hydrostatic or dynamic compression from the surrounding cloud has a significant impact on the early dynamical evolution of filaments. A simple model of an isolated, isothermal cylinder may not provide a good approach for fragmentation analysis. Caution must be exercised in interpreting distributions of properties of filaments identified in column density maps, especially in the case of low-mass filaments. Comparing or combining results from studies that use different filament finding techniques is strongly discouraged.