2009/01/20 by Mark R. Krumholz, Richard I. Klein, Christopher F. McKee +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.SR #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1165857
published as Science 323:754-757,2009 · Accepted by Science. 28 pages, 8 figures, Science manuscript format, includes both main text and supplementary online material. Figure resolution severely degraded to fit within size limits. For movie and full resolution figures, see http://www.ucolick.org/~krumholz/publications.html
arxiv created 2009/01/20 · arxiv updated 2011/02/21
Massive stars produce so much light that the radiation pressure they exert on the gas and dust around them is stronger than their gravitational attraction, a condition that has long been expected to prevent them from growing by accretion. We present three-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of a massive prestellar core and find that radiation pressure does not halt accretion. Instead, gravitational and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities channel gas onto the star system through non-axisymmetric disks and filaments that self-shield against radiation, while allowing radiation to escape through optically-thin bubbles. Gravitational instabilities cause the disk to fragment and form a massive companion to the primary star. Radiation pressure does not limit stellar masses, but the instabilities that allow accretion to continue lead to small multiple systems.