Effect of Angular Momentum Alignment and Strong Magnetic Fields on the Formation of Protostellar Disks

Abstract

Star forming molecular clouds are observed to be both highly magnetized and turbulent. Consequently the formation of protostellar disks is largely dependent on the complex interaction between gravity, magnetic fields, and turbulence. Studies of non-turbulent protostellar disk formation with realistic magnetic fields have shown that these fields are efficient in removing angular momentum from the forming disks, preventing their formation. However, once turbulence is included, disks can form in even highly magnetized clouds, although the precise mechanism remains uncertain. Here we present several high resolution simulations of turbulent, realistically magnetized, high-mass molecular clouds with both aligned and random turbulence to study the role that turbulence, misalignment, and magnetic fields have on the formation of protostellar disks. We find that when the turbulence is artificially aligned so that the angular momentum is parallel to the initial uniform field, no rotationally supported disks are formed, regardless of the initial turbulent energy. We conclude that turbulence and the associated misalignment between the angular momentum and the magnetic field are crucial in the formation of protostellar disks in the presence of realistic magnetic fields.

21 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• The Role of Magnetic Fields in Protostellar Outflows and Star Formation
• The role of magnetic fields in the formation of protostellar discs
• Formation and Evolution of Disks around Young Stellar Objects
• Zooming in on Individual Star Formation: Low- and High-mass Stars
• The Effect of Misalignment between Rotation Axis and Magnetic Field on Circumstellar Disk
• Magnetic Fields in the Formation of the First Stars. I. Theory vs. Simulation
• Non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics vs turbulence I: Which is the dominant process in protostellar disc formation?
• Ionization: a possible explanation for the difference of mean disk sizes in star-forming regions
• Turbulence in a self-gravitating molecular cloud core
• ALMA observations reveal no preferred outflow--filament and outflow--magnetic field orientations
• The role of initial magnetic field structure in the launching of protostellar jets
• Non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics vs turbulence II: Which is the dominant process in stellar core formation?
• The impact of episodic outflow feedback on stellar multiplicity and the star formation efficiency
• Driving Conditions of Protostellar Outflows in Different Star-Forming Environments
• Time Evolution of 3D Disk Formation with Misaligned Magnetic Field and Rotation Axes