Implementing and comparing sink particles in AMR and SPH

Abstract

We implemented sink particles in the Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) code FLASH to model the gravitational collapse and accretion in turbulent molecular clouds and cores. Sink particles are frequently used to measure properties of star formation in numerical simulations, such as the star formation rate and efficiency, and the mass distribution of stars. We show that only using a density threshold for sink particle creation is insufficient in case of supersonic flows, because the density can exceed the threshold in strong shocks that do not necessarily lead to local collapse. Additional physical collapse indicators have to be considered. We apply our AMR sink particle module to the formation of a star cluster, and compare it to a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code with sink particles. Our comparison shows encouraging agreement of gas and sink particle properties between the AMR and SPH code.

6 pages, 4 figures, conference proceedings of IAU Symposium 270 (eds. Alves, Elmegreen, Girart, Trimble) simulation movies available at http://www.ita.uni-heidelberg.de/~chfeder/pubs/sinks/sinks.shtml?lang=en

References in corpus (3)

• Modeling Collapse and Accretion in Turbulent Gas Clouds: Implementation and Comparison of Sink Particles in AMR and SPH
• The effect of magnetic fields on star cluster formation
• Smoothed Particle Magnetohydrodynamics IV - Using the Vector Potential

Cited by in corpus (8)

• AGN Feedback Compared: Jets versus Radiation
• The importance of magnetic fields for the initial mass function of the first stars
• The role of the H${}_2$ adiabatic index in the formation of the first stars
• The dependence of episodic accretion on eccentricity during the formation of binary stars
• Population III star formation in the presence of turbulence, magnetic fields and ionizing radiation feedback
• Magnetic fields limit the mass of Population III stars even before the onset of protostellar radiation feedback
• Episodic accretion in binary protostars emerging from self-gravitating solar mass cores
• Radiation magnetohydrodynamics simulations of Population III star formation during the Epoch of Reionization