Gas-cooling by dust during dynamical fragmentation

Abstract

We suggest that the abrupt switch, from hierarchical clustering on scales larger than 0.04 pc, to binary (and occasionally higher multiple) systems on smaller scales, which Larson has deduced from his analysis of the grouping of pre-Main-Sequence stars in Taurus, arises because pre-protostellar gas becomes thermally coupled to dust at sufficiently high densities. The resulting change from gas-cooling by molecular lines at low densities to gas-cooling by dust at high densities enables the matter to radiate much more efficiently, and hence to undergo dynamical fragmentation. We derive the domain where gas-cooling by dust facilitates dynamical fragmentation. Low-mass (i.e. solar mass) clumps - those supported mainly by thermal pressure - can probably access this domain spontaneously, albeit rather quasistatically, provided they exist in a region where external perturbations are few and far between. More massive clumps probably require an impulsive external perturbation, for instance a supersonic collision with another clump, in order for the gas to reach sufficiently high density to couple thermally to the dust. Impulsive external perturbations should promote fragmentation, by generating highly non-line ar substructures which can then be amplified by gravity during the subsequent collapse.

9 pages, 4 figures, accepted by MNRAS

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