Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 674, Issue 1, Pages 316-328Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1086/523697
Keywords
gravitation; instabilities; ISM : clouds; methods : numerical; stars : formation; turbulence
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We study numerically the formation of molecular clouds in large-scale colliding flows including self-gravity. The models emphasize the competition between the effects of gravity on global and local scales in an isolated cloud. Global gravity builds up large-scale filaments, while local gravity, triggered by a combination of strong thermal and dynamical instabilities, causes cores to form. The dynamical instabilities give rise to a local focusing of the colliding flows, facilitating the rapid formation of massive protostellar cores of a few hundred M-circle dot. The forming clouds do not reach an equilibrium state, although the motions within the clouds appear to be comparable to virial. The self-similar core mass distributions derived from models with and without self-gravity indicate that the core mass distribution is set very early on during the cloud formation process, predominantly by a combination of thermal and dynamical instabilities rather than by self-gravity.
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