A general hybrid radiation transport scheme for star formation simulations on an adaptive grid

Abstract

Radiation feedback plays a crucial role in the process of star formation. In order to simulate the thermodynamic evolution of disks, filaments, and the molecular gas surrounding clusters of young stars, we require an efficient and accurate method for solving the radiation transfer problem. We describe the implementation of a hybrid radiation transport scheme in the adaptive grid-based FLASH general magnetohydrodynamics code. The hybrid scheme splits the radiative transport problem into a raytracing step and a diffusion step. The raytracer captures the first absorption event, as stars irradiate their environments, while the evolution of the diffuse component of the radiation field is handled by a flux-limited diffusion (FLD) solver. We demonstrate the accuracy of our method through a variety of benchmark tests including the irradiation of a static disk, subcritical and supercritical radiative shocks, and thermal energy equilibration. We also demonstrate the capability of our method for casting shadows and calculating gas and dust temperatures in the presence of multiple stellar sources. Our method enables radiation-hydrodynamic studies of young stellar objects, protostellar disks, and clustered star formation in magnetized, filamentary environments.

16 pages, 15 figures, accepted to ApJ

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• An Unstable Truth: How Massive Stars get their Mass
• Forming spectroscopic massive proto-binaries by disk fragmentation
• Protostellar Outflows and Radiative Feedback from Massive Stars. II. Feedback, Star Formation Efficiency, and Outflow Broadening
• Radiation hydrodynamics simulations of massive star cluster formation in giant molecular clouds
• Hybrid Adaptive Ray-Moment Method (HARM${}^2$): A Highly Parallel Method for Radiation Hydrodynamics on Adaptive Grids
• Makemake + Sedna: A Continuum Radiation Transport and Photoionization Framework for Astrophysical Newtonian Fluid Dynamics
• The Effect of Protoplanetary Disk Cooling Times on the Formation of Gas Giant Planets by Gravitational Instability
• Tree-based solvers for adaptive mesh refinement code FLASH -- II: radiation transport module TreeRay
• VETTAM: A scheme for radiation hydrodynamics with adaptive mesh refinement using the variable Eddington tensor method
• Radiation hydrodynamics including irradiation and adaptive mesh refinement with AZEuS. I. Methods
• Multiphase Gas Nature in the Sub-parsec Region of the Active Galactic Nuclei I: Dynamical Structures of Dusty and Dust-free Outflow
• Radiation transport methods in star formation simulations
• EVN observations of 6.7 GHz methanol maser polarization in massive star-forming regions IV. Magnetic field strength limits and structure for 7 additional sources
• A Variable Eddington Factor Model for Thermal Radiative Transfer with Closure based on Data-Driven Shape Function