Protostellar Collapse Research Articles

Magnetically regulated collapse in the B335 protostar ?

AbstractThe role of the magnetic field during protostellar collapse is still poorly constrained from an observational point of view, and only few constraints exist that shed light on the magnetic braking efficiency during the main accretion phase. I presented our ALMA polarimetric observations of the thermal dust continuum emission at 1.3 mm, towards the B335 Class 0 protostar (Maury et al. 2018a). Linearly polarized dust emission is detected at all scales probed by our observations (50 to 1000 au). The magnetic field structure has a very ordered topology in the inner envelope, with a transition from a large-scale poloidal magnetic field, in the outflow direction, to strongly pinched in the equatorial direction. We compared our data to a family of magnetized protostellar collapse models. We show that only models with an initial core mass-to-flux ratio μ∼5-6 are able to reproduce the observed properties of B335, especially the upper-limits on its disk size, its large-scale envelope rotation β and the pronounced magnetic field lines pinching observed in our ALMA data. In these MHD models, the magnetic field is dynamically relevant to regulate the typical outcome of protostellar collapse, suggesting a magnetically-regulated disk formation scenarios is at work in B335.

Characterizing the youngest protostellar disks with the IRAM-PdBI and ALMA interferometers

AbstractI present our observations and modeling of the 1.3 mm and 3.18 mm dust continuum emission in Class 0 protostars, from the IRAM-PdBI CALYPSO survey. We show that most protostars are better reproduced by models including a disk-like dust continuum component contributing to the flux at small scales, but less than 25% of these candidate protostellar disks are resolved at radii >60 au, which favors magnetized models of rotating protostellar collapse for disk formation (Maury et al. 2019). I also present new ALMA observations of the molecular line emission in the IRAM04191 protostar, suggesting a small counter-rotating disk is detected in this young low-luminosity solar-type protostar. Finally, I show our ALMA observations of the magnetic field topology in the B335 protostar, which when compared to the typical output from protostellar collapse models, suggest the magnetic field might be responsible for constraining the disk size to remain very small in this protostar (Maury et al. 2018).

Star formation from dense shocked regions in supersonic isothermal magnetoturbulence

Supersonic isothermal turbulence establishes a network of transient dense shocks that sweep up material and have a density profile described by balance between ram pressure of the background fluid versus the magnetic and gas pressure gradient behind the shock. These rare, densest regions of a turbulent environment can become Jeans unstable and collapse to form pre-stellar cores. Using numerical simulations of magneto-gravo-turbulence, we describe the structural properties of dense shocks, which are the seeds of gravitational collapse, as a function of magnetic field strength. In the regime of a weak magnetic field, the collapse is isotropic. Strong magnetic field strengths lead to significant anisotropy in the shocked distribution and collapse occurs preferentially parallel to the field lines. Our work provides insight into analyzing the magnetic field topology and density structures of young protostellar collapse, which the theory presented here predicts are associated with large-scale strong shocks that persist for at least a free-fall time.

A Fast and Accurate Method of Radiation Hydrodynamics Calculation in Spherical Symmetry

Abstract We develop a new numerical scheme for solving the radiative transfer equation in a spherically symmetric system. This scheme does not rely on any kind of diffusion approximation, and it is accurate for optically thin, thick, and intermediate systems. In the limit of a homogeneously distributed extinction coefficient, our method is very accurate and exceptionally fast. We combine this fast method with a slower but more generally applicable method to describe realistic problems. We perform various test calculations, including a simplified protostellar collapse simulation. We also discuss possible future improvements.

Magnetically regulated collapse in the B335 protostar? I. ALMA observations of the polarized dust emission

The role of the magnetic field during protostellar collapse is poorly constrained from an observational point of view, although it could be significant if we believe state-of-the-art models of protostellar formation. We present polarimetric observations of the 233 GHz thermal dust continuum emission obtained with ALMA in the B335 Class 0 protostar. Linearly polarized dust emission arising from the circumstellar material in the envelope of B335 is detected at all scales probed by our observations, from radii of 50 to 1000 au. The magnetic field structure producing the dust polarization has a very ordered topology in the inner envelope, with a transition from a large-scale poloidal magnetic field, in the outflow direction, to strongly pinched in the equatorial direction. This is probably due to magnetic field lines being dragged along the dominating infall direction since B335 does not exhibit prominent rotation. Our data and their qualitative comparison to a family of magnetized protostellar collapse models show that, during the magnetized collapse in B335, the magnetic field is maintaining a high level of organization from scales 1000 au to 50 au: this suggests the field is dynamically relevant and capable of influencing the typical outcome of protostellar collapse, such as regulating the disk size in B335.

Magnetic diffusivities in 3D radiative chemo-hydrodynamic simulations of protostellar collapse

Context. Both theory and observations of star-forming clouds require simulations that combine the co-evolving chemistry, magneto-hydrodynamics, and radiative transfer in protostellar collapse simulation. A detailed knowledge of self-consistent chemical evolution for the main charge carriers (both gas species and dust grains) allows us to correctly estimate the rate and nature of magnetic dissipation in the collapsing core. This knowledge is critical to answer one of the most significant issues of star and planet formation: what is the magnitude and spatial distribution of magnetic flux as the initial condition to protoplanetary disk evolution? Aims. We use a chemo-dynamical version of RAMSES, which is described in a companion publication, to follow the chemo-dynamical evolution of collapsing dense cores with various dust properties and interpret differences that occur in magnetic diffusivity terms. These differences are crucial to circumstellar disk formation. Methods. We performed 3D chemo-dynamical simulations of 1 M⊙ isolated dense core collapse for a range in dust size assumptions. The number density of dust and its mean size affect the efficiency of charge capturing and the formation of ices. The radiative hydrodynamics and dynamical evolution of chemical abundances were used to reconstruct the magnetic diffusivity terms for clouds with various magnetisation. Results. The simulations are performed for a mean dust size ranging from 0.017 μm to 1 μm, and we adopt both a fixed dust size and a dust size distribution. The chemical abundances for this range of dust sizes are produced by RAMSES and serve as inputs to calculations of Ohmic, ambipolar, and Hall diffusivity terms. Ohmic resistivity only plays a role at the late stage of the collapse in the innermost region of the cloud where gas density is in excess of a few times 1013 cm-3. Ambipolar diffusion is a dominant magnetic diffusivity term in cases where mean dust size is a typical ISM value or larger. We demonstrate that the assumption of a fixed dominant ion mass can lead to a one order of magnitude mismatch in the ambipolar diffusion magnitude. The negative Hall effect is dominant during the collapse in case of small dust, i.e. for the mean dust size of 0.02 μm and smaller; we connect this effect to the dominance of negatively charged grains. We find that the Hall effect reverses its sign for mean dust size of 0.1 μm and smaller. The phenomenon of the sign reversal strongly depends on the number of negatively charged dust relative to the ions and the quality of coupling of the charged dust to the magnetic fields. We have adopted different strengths of magnetic fields, β = Pgas/Pmag = 2,5,25. We observe that the variation on the field strength only shifts the Hall effect reversal along the radius of the collapsing cloud, but does not prevent it. Conclusions. The dust grain mean size appears to be the parameter with the strongest impact on the magnitude of the magnetic diffusivity, dividing the collapsing clouds in Hall-dominated and ambipolar-dominated clouds and affecting the size of the resulting disks. We propose to link the dust properties and occurrence and size of disk structures in Class 0 young stellar objects. The proper accounting for dust grain growth in the radiative magneto-hydrodynamical collapse models are as important as coupling the dynamics of the collapse with the chemistry.

UCLCHEM: A Gas-grain Chemical Code for Clouds, Cores, and C-Shocks*

Abstract We present a publicly available, open source version of the time-dependent, gas-grain chemical code UCLCHEM. UCLCHEM propagates the abundances of chemical species through a large network of chemical reactions in a variety of physical conditions. The model is described in detail, along with its applications. As an example of possible uses, UCLCHEM is used to explore the effect of protostellar collapse on commonly observed molecules, and study the behavior of molecules in C-type shocks. We find the collapse of a simple Bonnor–Ebert sphere successfully reproduces most of the behavior of CO, CS, and NH3 from cores observed by Tafalla et al. (2004), but cannot predict the behavior of N2H+. In the C-shock application, we find that molecules can be categorized such that they become useful observational tracers of shocks and their physical properties. Although many molecules are enhanced in shocked gas, we identify two groups of molecules in particular. A small number of molecules are enhanced by the sputtering of the ices as the shock propagates, and then remain high in abundance throughout the shock. A second, larger set is also enhanced by sputtering, but then destroyed as the gas temperature rises. Through these applications, the general applicability of UCLCHEM is demonstrated.

A grid of one-dimensional low-mass star formation collapse models

The current study was developed to provide a database of relatively simple numerical simulations of protostellar collapse, as a template library for observations of cores and very young protostars, and for researchers who wish to test their chemical modeling under dynamic astrophysical conditions. It was also designed to identify statistical trends that may appear when running many models of the formation of low-mass stars by varying the initial conditions. A large set of 143 calculations of the gravitational collapse of an isolated sphere of gas with uniform temperature and a Bonnor-Ebert like density profile was undertaken using a 1D fully implicit Lagrangian radiation hydrodynamics code. The parameter space covered initial masses from 0.2 to 8 Msun, temperatures of 5-30 K and radii between 3000 and 30,000 AU. A spread in the thermal evolutionary tracks of the runs was found, due to differing initial conditions and optical depths. Within less than an order of magnitude, all first and second Larson cores had masses and radii independent of the initial conditions. The time elapsed between the formation of the first and second cores was found to strongly depend on the first core mass accretion rate, and no first core in our grid of models lived for longer than 2000 years, before the onset of the second collapse. The end product of a protostellar cloud collapse, the second Larson core, is, at birth, a canonical object with a mass and radius of about 3 Mjup and 8 Rjup, independent of its initial conditions. The evolution sequence which brings the gas to stellar densities can however proceed in a variety of scenarios, on different timescales, along different isentropes, but each story line can largely be predicted by the initial conditions. All the data from the simulations are publicly available at this address: http://starformation.hpc.ku.dk/grid-of-protostars.

SPHERICALLY SYMMETRIC, COLD COLLAPSE: THE EXACT SOLUTIONS AND A COMPARISON WITH SELF-SIMILAR SOLUTIONS

ABSTRACT We present the exact solutions for the collapse of a spherically symmetric cold (i.e., pressureless) cloud under its own self-gravity, valid for arbitrary initial density profiles and not restricted to the realm of self-similarity. These solutions exhibit a number of remarkable features, including the self-consistent formation of and subsequent accretion onto a central point mass. A number of specific examples are provided, and we show that Penston’s solution of pressureless self-similar collapse is recovered for polytropic density profiles; importantly, however, we demonstrate that the time over which this solution holds is fleetingly short, implying that much of the collapse proceeds non-self-similarly. We show that our solutions can naturally incorporate turbulent pressure support, and we investigate the evolution of overdensities—potentially generated by such turbulence—as the collapse proceeds. Finally, we analyze the evolution of the angular velocity and magnetic fields in the limit that their dynamical influence is small, and we recover exact solutions for these quantities. Our results may provide important constraints on numerical models that attempt to elucidate the details of protostellar collapse when the initial conditions are far less idealized.

On the dynamics of dust during protostellar collapse

The dynamics of dust and gas can be quite different from each other when the dust is poorly coupled to the gas. In protoplanetary discs, it is well known that this decoupling of the dust and gas can lead to diverse spatial structures and dust-to-gas ratios. In this paper, we study the dynamics of dust and gas during the earlier phase of protostellar collapse, before a protoplanetary disc is formed. We find that for dust grains with sizes < 10 micron, the dust is well coupled during the collapse of a rotating, pre-stellar core and there is little variation of the dust-to-gas ratio during the collapse. However, if larger grains are present, they may have trajectories that are very different from the gas during the collapse, leading to mid-plane settling and/or oscillations of the dust grains through the mid-plane. This may produce variations in the dust-to-gas ratio and very different distributions of large and small dust grains at the very earliest stages of star formation, if large grains are present in pre-stellar cores.

Chemical solver to compute molecule and grain abundances and non-ideal MHD resistivities in prestellar core-collapse calculations

We develop a detailed chemical network relevant to the conditions characteristic of prestellar core collapse. We solve the system of time-dependent differential equations to calculate the equilibrium abundances of molecules and dust grains, with a size distribution given by size-bins for these latter. These abundances are used to compute the different non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamics resistivities (ambipolar, Ohmic and Hall), needed to carry out simulations of protostellar collapse. For the first time in this context, we take into account the evaporation of the grains, the thermal ionisation of Potassium, Sodium and Hydrogen at high temperature, and the thermionic emission of grains in the chemical network, and we explore the impact of various cosmic ray ionisation rates. All these processes significantly affect the non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamics resistivities, which will modify the dynamics of the collapse. Ambipolar diffusion and Hall effect dominate at low densities, up to n_H = 10^12 cm^-3, after which Ohmic diffusion takes over. We find that the time-scale needed to reach chemical equilibrium is always shorter than the typical dynamical (free fall) one. This allows us to build a large, multi-dimensional multi-species equilibrium abundance table over a large temperature, density and ionisation rate ranges. This table, which we make accessible to the community, is used during first and second prestellar core collapse calculations to compute the non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamics resistivities, yielding a consistent dynamical-chemical description of this process.

Magnetic Stars After the Hayashi Phase. I

The problems of the origin and evolution of magnetic stars based on analysis of observational data are discussed. It is assumed that magnetic stars acquire their major properties during the protostellar collapse stage. The properties of magnetic stars after the Hayashi phase are examined in detail.

Theory of Protostellar Disk Formation

AbstractHow large, 100-AU scale, rotationally supported disks form around protostars remains unsettled, both observationally and theoretically. In this contribution, we discuss the theoretical difficulties with disk formation in the presence of a dynamically significant magnetic field and their possible resolutions. These difficulties are caused by the concentration of magnetic field lines close to the forming star by protostellar collapse, and the strong magnetic braking associated with the concentrated field. Possible resolutions include magnetic field-rotation axis misalignment, non-ideal MHD effects, and turbulence. The field-rotation misalignment has been shown to promote disk formation, especially when the field is relatively weak and the misalignment angle is relatively large. Non-ideal MHD effects can enable the formation of small disks at early times. How such disks grow at later times remains to be fully quantified. Turbulence has been found to enable disk formation in a number of simulations, but the exact reason for its beneficial effect is debated.

Multigroup radiation hydrodynamics with flux-limited diffusion and adaptive mesh refinement

Radiative transfer plays a key role in the star formation process. Due to a high computational cost, radiation-hydrodynamics simulations performed up to now have mainly been carried out in the grey approximation. In recent years, multi-frequency radiation-hydrodynamics models have started to emerge, in an attempt to better account for the large variations of opacities as a function of frequency. We wish to develop an efficient multigroup algorithm for the adaptive mesh refinement code RAMSES which is suited to heavy proto-stellar collapse calculations. Due to prohibitive timestep constraints of an explicit radiative transfer method, we constructed a time-implicit solver based on a stabilised bi-conjugate gradient algorithm, and implemented it in RAMSES under the flux-limited diffusion approximation. We present a series of tests which demonstrate the high performance of our scheme in dealing with frequency-dependent radiation-hydrodynamic flows. We also present a preliminary simulation of a three-dimensional proto-stellar collapse using 20 frequency groups. Differences between grey and multigroup results are briefly discussed, and the large amount of information this new method brings us is also illustrated. We have implemented a multigroup flux-limited diffusion algorithm in the RAMSES code. The method performed well against standard radiation-hydrodynamics tests, and was also shown to be ripe for exploitation in the computational star formation context.

RADIATION MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF PROTOSTELLAR COLLAPSE: NONIDEAL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC EFFECTS AND EARLY FORMATION OF CIRCUMSTELLAR DISKS

The transport of angular momentum by magnetic fields is a crucial physical process in formation and evolution of stars and disks. Because the ionization degree in star forming clouds is extremely low, non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effects such as ambipolar diffusion and Ohmic dissipation work strongly during protostellar collapse. These effects have significant impacts in the early phase of star formation as they redistribute magnetic flux and suppress angular momentum transport by magnetic fields. We perform three-dimensional nested-grid radiation magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) simulations including Ohmic dissipation and ambipolar diffusion. Without these effects, magnetic fields transport angular momentum so efficiently that no rotationally supported disk is formed even after the second collapse. Ohmic dissipation works only in a relatively high density region within the first core and suppresses angular momentum transport, enabling formation of a very small rotationally supported disk after the second collapse. With both Ohmic dissipation and ambipolar diffusion, these effects work effectively in almost the entire region within the first core and significant magnetic flux loss occurs. As a result, a rotationally supported disk is formed even before a protostellar core forms. The size of the disk is still small, about 5 AU at the end of the first core phase, but this disk will grow later as gas accretion continues. Thus the non-ideal MHD effects can resolve the so-called magnetic braking catastrophe while maintaining the disk size small in the early phase, which is implied from recent interferometric observations.

Low-Mass Star Formation: From Molecular Cloud Cores to Protostars and Protoplanetary Disks

This review describes realistic evolution of magnetic field and rotation of the protostars, dynamics of outflows and jets, and the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks. Recent advances in the protostellar collapse simulations cover a huge dynamic range from molecular cloud core density to stellar density in a self-consistent manner and account for all the non-ideal magnetohydrodynamical effects, such as Ohmic resistivity, ambipolar diffusion, and Hall current. We explain the emergence of the first core, i.e. , the quasi-hydrostatic object that consists of molecular gas, and the second core, i.e. , the protostar. Ohmic dissipation largely removes the magnetic flux from the center of a collapsing cloud core. A fast well-collimated bipolar jet along the rotation axis of the protostar is driven after the magnetic field is re-coupled with warm gas (∼103 K) around the protostar. The circumstellar disk is born in the “dead zone”, a region that is de-coupled from the magnetic field, and the outer radius of the disk increases with that of the dead zone during the early accretion phase. The rapid increase of the disk size occurs after the depletion of the envelope of molecular cloud core. The effect of Hall current may create two distinct populations of protoplanetary disks.

RADIATION MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF PROTOSTELLAR COLLAPSE: LOW-METALLICITY ENVIRONMENTS

Among many physical processes involved in star formation, radiation transfer is one of the key processes since it dominantly controls the thermodynamics. Because metallicities control opacities, they are one of the important environmental parameters which affect star formation processes. In this work, I investigate protostellar collapse in solar-metallicity and low-metallicity ($Z = 0.1 Z_\odot$) environments using 3D radiation hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulations. Because radiation cooling is more effective in the low-metallicity environments, first cores are colder and have lower entropies. As a result, first cores are smaller, less massive and have shorter lifetimes in the low-metallicity clouds. Therefore, first cores would be less likely to be found in low-metallicity star forming clouds. This also implies that first cores tend to be more gravitationally unstable and susceptible to fragmentation. The evolution and structure of protostellar cores formed after the second collapse weakly depend on metallicities in the spherical and magnetized models despite the large difference in the metallicities. Because this is due to the change of the heat capacity by dissociation and ionization of hydrogen, it is a general consequence of the second collapse as long as the effects of radiation cooling are not very large during the second collapse. On the other hand, the effects of different metallicities are more significant in the rotating models without magnetic fields, because they evolve slower than other models and therefore more affected by radiation cooling.

A fast, robust, and simple implicit method for adaptive time-stepping on adaptive mesh-refinement grids

Implicit solvers present strong limitations when used on supercomputing facilities and in particular for adaptive mesh-refinement codes. We present a new method for implicit adaptive time-stepping on adaptive mesh refinement-grids. We implement it in the radiation hydrodynamics solver we designed for the RAMSES code for astrophysical purposes and, more particularly, for protostellar collapse. We briefly recall the radiation hydrodynamics equations and the adaptive time-stepping methodology used for hydrodynamical solvers. We then introduce the different types of boundary conditions (Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin) that are used at the interface between levels and present our implementation of the new method in the RAMSES code. The method is tested against classical diffusion and radiation hydrodynamics tests, after which we present an application for protostellar collapse. We show that using Dirichlet boundary conditions at level interfaces is a good compromise between robustness and accuracy and that it can be used in structure formation calculations. The gain in computational time over our former unique time step method ranges from factors of 5 to 50 depending on the level of adaptive time-stepping and on the problem. We successfully compare the old and new methods for protostellar collapse calculations that involve highly nonlinear physics. We have developed a simple but robust method for adaptive time-stepping of implicit scheme on adaptive mesh-refinement grids. It can be applied to a wide variety of physical problems that involve diffusion processes.

Simulations of protostellar collapse using multigroup radiation hydrodynamics

Star formation begins with the gravitational collapse of a dense core inside a molecular cloud. As the collapse progresses, the centre of the core begins to heat up as it becomes optically thick. The temperature and density in the centre eventually reach high enough values where fusion reactions can ignite; the protostar is born. This sequence of events entail many physical processes, of which radiative transfer is of paramount importance. Many simulations of protostellar collapse make use of a grey treatment of radiative transfer coupled to the hydrodynamics. However, interstellar gas and dust opacities present large variations as a function of frequency. In this paper, we follow-up on a previous paper on the collapse and formation of Larson's first core using multigroup radiation hydrodynamics (Paper I) by extending the calculations to the second phase of the collapse and the formation of Larson's second core. We have made the use of a non-ideal gas equation of state as well as an extensive set of spectral opacities in a spherically symmetric fully implicit Godunov code to model all the phases of the collapse of a 0.1, 1 and 10 solar mass cloud cores. We find that, for a same central density, there are only small differences between the grey and multigroup simulations. The first core accretion shock remains supercritical while the shock at the second core border is found to be strongly subcritical with all the accreted energy being transfered to the core. The size of the first core was found to vary somewhat in the different simulations (more unstable clouds form smaller first cores) while the size, mass and temperature of the second cores are independent of initial cloud mass, size and temperature. Our simulations support the idea of a standard (universal) initial second core size of 0.003 AU and mass 0.0014 solar masses.

REVISITING THE FIRST GALAXIES: THE EFFECTS OF POPULATION III STARS ON THEIR HOST GALAXIES

We revisit the formation and evolution of the first galaxies using new hydrodynamic cosmological simulations with the ART code. Our simulations feature a recently developed model for H2 formation and dissociation, and a star formation recipe that is based on molecular rather than atomic gas. Here, we develop and implement a recipe for the formation of metal-free Population III stars in galaxy-scale simulations that resolve primordial clouds with sufficiently high density. We base our recipe on the results of prior zoom-in simulations that resolved the protostellar collapse in pre-galactic objects. We find the epoch during which Pop III stars dominated the energy and metal budget of the first galaxies to be short-lived. Galaxies which host Pop III stars do not retain dynamical signatures of their thermal and radiative feedback for more than 10^8 yr after the lives of the stars end in pair-instability supernovae, even when we consider the maximum reasonable efficiency of the feedback. Though metals ejected by the supernovae can travel well beyond the virial radius of the host galaxy, they typically begin to fall back quickly, and do not enrich a large fraction of the intergalactic medium. Galaxies with total mass in excess of 3 x 10^6 Msun re-accrete most of their baryons and transition to metal-enriched Pop II star formation.