Filamentary Molecular Cloud Formation via Collision-induced Magnetic Reconnection in Cold Neutral Medium

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that collision-induced magnetic reconnection in the cold neutral medium can form giant filamentary molecular clouds with active star formation, driven by magnetic processes and turbulence generated naturally during cloud collisions.

Contribution

It introduces the CMR mechanism as a novel process for molecular cloud and filament formation, emphasizing magnetic reconnection and bottom-up assembly without external turbulence driving.

Findings

Formation of 20pc filamentary structures via CMR

Presence of dense cores with star formation activity

Self-generated turbulence from magnetic reconnection

Abstract

We have investigated the possibility of molecular cloud formation via the Collision-induced Magnetic Reconnection (CMR) mechanism of the cold neutral medium (CNM). Two atomic gas clouds with conditions typical of the CNM were set to collide at the interface of reverse magnetic fields. The cloud-cloud collision triggered magnetic reconnection and produced a giant 20pc filamentary structure which was not seen in the control models without CMR. The cloud, with rich fiber-like sub-structures, developed a fully molecular spine at 5Myr. Radiative transfer modeling of dust emission at far infrared wavelengths showed that the middle part of the filament contained dense cores over a span of 5pc. Some of the cores were actively forming stars and typically exhibited both connecting fibers in dust emission and high-velocity gas in CO line emission, indicative of active accretion through streamers. Supersonic turbulence was present in and around the CMR-filament due to inflowing gas moving at supersonic velocities in the collision mid-plane. The shocked gas was condensed and transported to the main filament piece by piece by reconnected fields, making the filament and star formation a bottom-up process. Instead of forming a gravitationally bounded cloud which then fragments hierarchically (top-down) and forms stars, the CMR process creates dense gas pieces and magnetically transports them to the central axis to constitute the filament. Since no turbulence is manually driven, our results suggest that CMR is capable of self-generating turbulence. Finally, the resulting helical field should show field-reversal on both sides of the filament from most viewing angles.