8 September 2016
James Clerk Maxwell Building, The King's Building
Europe/London timezone

Shaken and stirred - the role of turbulence, rotation, magnetism, and radiation in the formation of protostars

8 Sep 2016, 12:45
1h 15m
Lecture Theatre A (James Clerk Maxwell Building, The King's Building)

Lecture Theatre A

James Clerk Maxwell Building, The King's Building

Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD United Kingdom

Speaker

Mr Benjamin Lewis (University of Exeter)

Description

We expand on Lewis, et al. (2015) and (2016, submitted), which considered only ideal MHD simulations of the collapse of molecular cloud cores without turbulence, and use radiation magnetohydrodynamical calculations to explore how the physics of turbulence, rotation, magnetism and radiation influences the formation of protostars. The inclusion of a flux limited diffusion radiative transfer (FLD R-T) scheme in the SPH calculations (i.e. an SPRMHD scheme) promotes the formation of larger discs, as opposed to the very small and dense discs produced by the MHD only calculations. We also find that the gravitational collapse proceeds in a very different manner in cores with transonic turbulence compared with subsonic cores across a wide variety of field strengths and geometries. Cores with subsonic - and in particular very subsonic - turbulence still contain a bipolar jet and (depending on the magnetic field) form a pseudo-disc, albeit without the symmetry seen for laminar cores. Transonic (i.e. ~ Mach 1) cores are highly disrupted by the turbulent motion, which acts to suppress the formation of a pseudo-disc and hence a bipolar outflow. However, increasing the initial angular momentum of the core so that the rotational and turbulent energies are approximately equal allows even turbulent cores to produce jets and outflows.

Primary author

Mr Benjamin Lewis (University of Exeter)

Co-author

Prof. Matthew Bate (University of Exeter)

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