paper

Fragmentation of Molecular Clouds: The Initial Phase of a Stellar Cluster

arXiv:astro-ph/9805125 · doi:10.1086/311471

Abstract

The isothermal gravitational collapse and fragmentation of a region within a molecular cloud and the subsequent formation of a protostellar cluster is investigated numerically. The clump mass spectrum which forms during the fragmentation phase can be well approximated by a power law distribution dN/dM ~ M^(-1.5). In contrast, the mass spectrum of protostellar cores that form in the centers of Jeans-unstable clumps and evolve through accretion and N-body interactions is described by a log-normal distribution with a width that is in excellent agreement with observations of multiple stellar systems.

8 pages, including 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters (figure 1 has been degraded in resolution to reduce size)

References in corpus (2)

Cited by in corpus (119)