Gravitational collapse of polytropic, magnetized, filamentary clouds

Abstract

When the gas of a magnetized filamentary cloud obeys a polytropic equation of state, gravitational collapse of the cloud is studied using a simplified model. We concentrate on the radial distribution and restrict ourselves to the purely toroidal magnetic field. If the axial motions and poloidal magnetic fields are sufficiently weak, we could reasonably expect our solutions to be a good approximation. We show that while the filament experiences gravitational condensation and the density at the center increases, the toroidal flux-to-mass ratio remains constant. A series of spatial profiles of density, velocity and magnetic field for several values of the toroidal flux-to-mass ratio and the polytropic index, is obtained numerically and discussed.

accepted by MNRAS

References in corpus (3)

• Helical Fields and Filamentary Molecular Clouds
• On the Density Probability Function of Galactic Gas. I. Numerical Simulations and the Significance of the Polytropic Index
• Self-gravitating fluid dynamics, unstabilities and solitons

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Envelope Expansion with Core Collapse. III. Similarity Isothermal Shocks in a Magnetofluid
• Self-Similar Dynamics of a Magnetized Polytropic Gas
• Envelope Expansion with Core Collapse II. Quasi-Spherical Self-Similar Solutions for an Isothermal Magnetofluid
• Dynamical origin of non-thermal states in galactic filaments
• The origin of a universal filament width in molecular clouds
• Effect of magnetic field on the rotating filamentary molecular clouds
• Jump relations for magnetohydrodynamic shock waves in non-ideal gas flow