Supersonic turbulence, filamentary accretion and the rapid assembly of massive stars and discs
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abstract
We present a detailed computational study of the assembly of protostellar
disks and massive stars in molecular clouds with supersonic turbulence. We
follow the evolution of large scale filamentary structures in a cluster-forming
clump down to protostellar length scales by means of very highly resolved, 3D
adaptive mesh refined (AMR) simulations, and show how accretion disks and
massive stars form in such environments. We find that an initially elongated
cloud core which has a slight spin from oblique shocks collapses first to a
filament and later develops a turbulent disk close to the center of the
filament. The continued large scale flow that shocks with the filament
maintains the high density and pressure within it. Material within the cooling
filament undergoes gravitational collapse and an outside-in assembly of a
massive protostar. Our simulations show that very high mass accretion rates of
up to 10^-2 Msol/yr and high, supersonic, infall velocities result from such
filamentary accretion. Accretion at these rates is higher by an order of
magnitude than those found in semi-analytic studies, and can quench the
radiation field of a growing massive young star.Our simulations include a
comprehensive set of the important chemical and radiative processes such as
cooling by molecular line emission, gas-dust interaction, and radiative
diffusion in the optical thick regime, as well as H2 formation and
dissociation. Therefore, we are able to probe, for the first time, the relevant
physical phenomena on all scales from those characterizing the clump down to
protostellar core.
