THE EFFECT OF MAGNETIC FIELDS AND AMBIPOLAR DIFFUSION ON CORE MASS FUNCTIONS

2013/01/30 by Nicole D. Bailey, Shantanu Basu
Physics and Astronomy · #Ambipolar diffusion #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Core (optical fiber) #Diffusion #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Magnetic field #Nuclear physics #Optics #Physics #Plasma #Quantum mechanics #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Thermodynamics #astro-ph.SR

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/766/1/27

13 pages, 18 figures, 1 table. Accepted to Astrophysical Journal

arxiv created 2013/01/30 · openalex publication_date 2013/03/04 · arxiv updated 2015/06/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Linear analysis of the formation of protostellar cores in planar magnetic interstellar clouds yields information about length scales involved in star formation. Combining these length scales with various distributions of other environmental variables (i.e., column density and mass-to-flux ratio) and applying Monte Carlo methods allow us to produce synthetic core mass functions (CMFs) for different environmental conditions. Our analysis shows that the shape of the CMF is directly dependent on the physical conditions of the cloud. Specifically, magnetic fields act to broaden the mass function and develop a high-mass tail while ambipolar diffusion will truncate this high-mass tail. In addition, we analyze the effect of small number statistics on the shape and high-mass slope of the synthetic CMFs. We find that observed CMFs are severely statistically limited, which has a profound effect on the derived slope for the high-mass tail.

Citations

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