Star formation in a turbulent framework: from giant molecular clouds to protostars

Abstract

Turbulence is thought to be a primary driving force behind the early stages of star formation. In this framework large, self gravitating, turbulent clouds fragment into smaller clouds which in turn fragment into even smaller ones. At the end of this cascade we find the clouds which collapse into protostars. Following this process is extremely challenging numerically due to the large dynamical range so in this paper we propose a semi analytic framework which is able to follow star formation from the largest, giant molecular cloud (GMC) scale, to the final protostellar size scale. Due to the simplicity of the framework it is ideal for theoretical experimentation to explore the principal processes behind different aspects of star formation, at the cost of strong assumptions. The basic version of the model discussed in this paper only contains turbulence, gravity and crude assumptions about feedback, nevertheless it can reproduce the observed core mass function (CMF) and provide the protostellar system mass function (PSMF), which shows a striking resemblance to the observed IMF. Furthermore we find that to produce a universal IMF protostellar feedback must be taken into account otherwise the PSMF peak shows a strong dependence on the background temperature.