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On the indeterministic nature of star formation on the cloud scale

Geen, Sam; Watson, Stuart K; Rosdahl, Joakim; Bieri, Rebekka; Klessen, Ralf S; Hennebelle, Patrick (2018). On the indeterministic nature of star formation on the cloud scale. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 481(2):2548-2569.

Abstract

Molecular clouds are turbulent structures whose star formation efficiency (SFE) is strongly affected by internal stellar feedback processes. In this paper, we determine how sensitive the SFE of molecular clouds is to randomized inputs in the star formation feedback loop, and to what extent relationships between emergent cloud properties and the SFE can be recovered. We introduce the YULE suite of 26 radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a 10 000 solar mass cloud similar to those in the solar neighbourhood. We use the same initial global properties in every simulation but vary the initial mass function sampling and initial cloud velocity structure. The final SFE lies between 6 and 23 per cent when either of these parameters are changed. We use Bayesian mixed-effects models to uncover trends in the SFE. The number of photons emitted early in the cluster’s life and the length of the cloud provide the strongest predictors of the SFE. The H II regions evolve following an analytic model of expansion into a roughly isothermal density field. The more efficient feedback is at evaporating the cloud, the less the star cluster is dispersed. We argue that this is because if the gas is evaporated slowly, the stars are dragged outwards towards surviving gas clumps due to the gravitational attraction between the stars and gas. While star formation and feedback efficiencies are dependent on non-linear processes, statistical models describing cloud-scale processes can be constructed.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > Department of Comparative Language Science
Special Collections > Centers of Competence > Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution
Dewey Decimal Classification:490 Other languages
890 Other literatures
410 Linguistics
Scopus Subject Areas:Physical Sciences > Astronomy and Astrophysics
Physical Sciences > Space and Planetary Science
Language:English
Date:December 2018
Deposited On:26 Jan 2022 06:34
Last Modified:27 Oct 2024 02:36
Publisher:Oxford University Press
ISSN:0035-8711
OA Status:Green
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2439
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