2017/08/22 by Pak Shing Li, Richard Klein, Richard I. Klein +1 · 63 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Atmospheric Ozone and Climate #Galaxy #Infrared #Initial mass function #Luminosity #Molecular cloud #Outflow #Physics #Protostar #Radiative transfer #Star formation #Stars #Stellar mass #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Young stellar object #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx2611
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 473(3), 4220-4241 (Oxford University Press) · 24 pages, 18 figures
arxiv created 2017/08/22 · openalex created_date 2017/08/31 · openalex publication_date 2017/10/06 · arxiv updated 2017/12/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Star formation in a filamentary infrared dark cloud (IRDC) is simulated over the dynamic range of 4.2 pc to 28 au for a period of 3.5 10 5 yr, including magnetic fields and both radiative and outflow feedback from the protostars. At the end of the simulation, the star formation efficiency is 4.3 per cent and the star formation rate per free-fall time is ff 0.04, within the range of observed values. The total stellar mass increases as t 2 , whereas the number of protostars increases as t 1.5 . We find that the density profile around most of the simulated protostars is r -1.5 . At the end of the simulation, the protostellar mass function approaches the Chabrier stellar initial mass function. We infer that the time to form a star of median mass 0.2 M is about 1.4 10 5 yr from the median mass accretion rate. We find good agreement among the protostellar luminosities observed in the large sample of Dunham et al., our simulation and a theoretical estimate, and we conclude that the classical protostellar luminosity problem is resolved. The multiplicity of the stellar systems in the simulation agrees, to within a factor of 2, with observations of Class I young stellar objects; most of the simulated multiple systems are unbound. Bipolar protostellar outflows are launched using a subgrid model, and extend up to 1 pc from their host star. The mass-velocity relation of the simulated outflows is consistent with both observation and theory.