Effect of gravity-driven longitudinal flows in filaments on angular momentum transport to embedded cores

TL;DR

This study examines how gravity-driven flows along filaments in molecular clouds influence the angular momentum of embedded cores and their outflow orientations, revealing that such flows can reorient angular momentum over time.

Contribution

It demonstrates that gravity-driven longitudinal flows can develop and reorient angular momentum in filament cores, affecting outflow-filament alignment, with implications for star formation models.

Findings

No initial preferred alignment between sink angular momentum and filament orientation.

Perpendicular alignment develops as gravity and convergent flows strengthen.

Reorientation of angular momentum occurs rapidly once flows are established.

Abstract

Different models of filament formation predict distinct patterns of angular momentum redistribution toward embedded cores, set by the underlying velocity-field structure, which can set the initial conditions for a preferential orientation between protostellar outflows and filaments. However, the absence of a dominant alignment in observations keeps this connection open to debate. We investigate whether gravity-driven longitudinal flows along filaments can redistribute angular momentum (AM) toward collapse centers and influence outflow-filament alignment. To this end, we analyze the distributions of 3D and 2D-projected angles between sink angular momentum vectors and host filament orientations in an SPH simulation of giant molecular cloud and filament formation. We also characterize the filament velocity field by measuring the angles between SPH particle velocity vectors and filament axes, and the degree of convergent flow toward filament density peaks. No preferred alignment between the sinks' AM and the filament direction is found at early evolutionary stages, neither in 3D nor in 2D. Later, however, a predominantly perpendicular configuration emerges in 3D. Tracking individual sinks indicates that this alignment is not primordial but develops as gravity strengthens. In individual filaments, the onset of perpendicular alignment coincides with the development of convergent longitudinal flows. Finally, we estimate the minimum fraction of perpendicular 3D angles required to reveal a perpendicular 2D alignment for a given sample size. While longitudinal flows develop over extended timescales, once established, they can rapidly reorient the angular momentum vector of the sinks, enabling perpendicular alignments to arise within typical outflow lifetimes.