D. Seifried

KROME – a package to embed chemistry in astrophysical simulations

Chemistry plays a key role in many astrophysical situations regulating the cooling and the thermal properties of the gas, which are relevant during gravitational collapse, the evolution of disks and the fragmentation process. In order to simplify the usage of chemical networks in large numerical simulations, we present the chemistry package KROME, consisting of a Python pre-processor which generates a subroutine for the solution of chemical networks which can be embedded in any numerical code. For the solution of the rate equations, we make use of the high-order solver DLSODES, which was shown to be both accurate and efficient for sparse networks, which are typical in astrophysical applications. KROME also provides a large set of physical processes connected to chemistry, including photochemistry, cooling, heating, dust treatment, and reverse kinetics. The package presented here already contains a network for primordial chemistry, a small metal network appropriate for the modelling of low metallicities environments, a detailed network for the modelling of molecular clouds, a network for planetary atmospheres, as well as a framework for the modelling of the dust grain population. In this paper, we present an extended test suite ranging from one-zone and 1D-models to first applications including cosmological simulations with ENZO and RAMSES and 3D collapse simulations with the FLASH code. The package presented here is publicly available at this http URL and this https URL

Disc formation in turbulent massive cores: circumventing the magnetic braking catastrophe

We present collapse simulations of strongly magnetised, 100 M⊙, turbulent cloud cores. Around the protostars formed during the collapse Keplerian discs with typical sizes of up to 100 AU build up in contrast to previous simulations neglecting turbulence. Analysing the condensations in which the discs form, we show that the magnetic flux loss is not sufficient to explain the build-up of Keplerian discs. The average magnetic field is strongly inclined to the disc which might reduce the magnetic braking efficiency. However, the main reason for the reduced magnetic braking efficiency is the highly disordered magnetic field in the surroundings of the discs. Furthermore, due to the lack of a coherently rotating structure in the turbulent environment of the disc no toroidal magnetic field necessary for angular momentum extraction can build up. Simultaneously the angular momentum inflow remains high due to local shear flows created by the turbulent motions. We suggest that the “magnetic braking catastrophe” is an artefact of the idealised non-turbulent initial conditions and that turbulence provides a natural mechanism to circumvent this problem.

Turbulence-induced disc formation in strongly magnetized cloud cores

We present collapse simulations of strongly magnetised, turbulent molecular cloud cores with masses ranging from 2.6 to 1000 M_sun in order to study the influence of the initial conditions on the turbulence-induced disc formation mechanism proposed recently by Seifried et al. 2012. We find that Keplerian discs are formed in all cases independently of the core mass, the strength of turbulence, or the presence of global rotation. The discs appear within a few kyr after the formation of the protostar, are 50 - 150 AU in size, and have masses between 0.05 and a few 0.1 M_sun. During the formation of the discs the mass-to-flux ratio stays well below the critical value of 10 for Keplerian disc formation. Hence, flux-loss alone cannot explain the formation of Keplerian discs. The formation of rotationally supported discs at such early phases is rather due to the disordered magnetic field structure and due to turbulent motions in the surroundings of the discs, two effects lowering the classical magnetic braking efficiency. Binary systems occurring in the discs are mainly formed via the disc capturing mechanism rather than via disc fragmentation, which is largely suppressed by the presence of magnetic fields.

The impact of turbulence and magnetic field orientation on star-forming filaments

We present simulations of collapsing filaments studying the impact of turbulence and magnetic field morphologies on their evolution and star formation properties. We vary the mass per unit length of the filaments as well as the orientation of the magnetic field with respect to the major axis. We find that the filaments, which have no or a perpendicular magnetic field, typically reveal a smaller width than the universal width of 0.1 pc proposed by e.g. Arzoumanian et al. 2011. We show that this also holds in the presence of supersonic turbulence and that accretion driven turbulence is too weak to stabilize the filaments along their radial direction. On the other hand, we find that a magnetic field that is parallel to the major axis can stabilize the filament against radial collapse resulting in widths of 0.1 pc. Furthermore, depending on the filament mass and magnetic field configuration, gravitational collapse and fragmentation in filaments occurs either in an edge-on way, uniformly distributed across the entire length, or in a mixed way. In the presence of initially moderate density perturbations, a centralized collapse towards a common gravitational centre occurs. Our simulations can thus reproduce different modes of fragmentation observed recently in star forming filaments. Moreover, we find that turbulent motions influence the distance between individual fragments along the filament, which does not always match the results of a Jeans analysis.

Forced turbulence in thermally bistable gas: a parameter study

Context. Thermal instability is one of the dynamical agents for turbulence in the diffuse interstellar medium, where both turbulence and thermal instability interact in a highly non-linear manner. Aims. We study basic properties of turbulence in thermally bistable gas for variable simulation parameters. The resulting cold gas fractions can be applied as parameterisation in simulations on galactic scales. Methods. Turbulent flow is induced on large scales by means of compressive stochastic forcing in a periodic box. The compressible Euler equations with constant UV heating and a parameterised cooling function are solved on uniform grids. We investigate several values of the mean density of the gas and different magnitudes of the forcing. For comparison with other numerical studies, solenoidal forcing is applied as well. Results. After a transient phase, we observe that a state of statistically stationary turbulence is approached. Compressive forcing generally produces a two-phase medium, with a decreasing fraction of cold gas for increasing forcing strength. This behaviour can be explained on the basis of turbulent mixing. We also find power-law tails of probability density functions of the gas density in high-resolution runs. Solenoidal forcing, on the other hand, appears to prevent the evolution into a two-phase-medium for certain parameter regions. Conclusions. The dynamics of thermally bistable turbulence show a substantial sensitivity to the initial state and the forcing properties.

Accretion and magnetic field morphology around Class 0 stage protostellar discs

We analyse simulations of turbulent, magnetised molecular cloud cores focussing on the formation of Class 0 stage protostellar discs and the physical conditions in their surroundings. We show that for a wide range of initial conditions Keplerian discs are formed in the Class 0 stage already. In particular, we show that even subsonic turbulent motions reduce the magnetic braking efficiency sufficiently in order to allow rotationally supported discs to form. We therefore suggest that already during the Class 0 stage the fraction of Keplerian discs is significantly higher than 50%, consistent with recent observational trends but significantly higher than predictions based on simulations with misaligned magnetic fields, demonstrating the importance of turbulent motions for the formation of Keplerian discs. We show that the accretion of mass and angular momentum in the surroundings of protostellar discs occurs in a highly anisotropic manner, by means of a few narrow accretion channels. The magnetic field structure in the vicinity of the discs is highly disordered, revealing field reversals up to distances of 1000 AU. These findings demonstrate that as soon as even mild turbulent motions are included, the classical disc formation scenario of a coherently rotating environment and a well-ordered magnetic field breaks down. Hence, it is highly questionable to assess the magnetic braking efficiency based on non-turbulent collapse simulation. We strongly suggest that, in addition to the global magnetic field properties, the small-scale accretion flow and detailed magnetic field structure have to be considered in order to assess the likelihood of Keplerian discs to be present.

Supernova feedback in molecular clouds: global evolution and dynamics

We use magnetohydrodynamical simulations of converging warm neutral medium flows to analyse the formation and global evolution of magnetised and turbulent molecular clouds subject to supernova feedback from massive stars. We show that supernova feedback alone fails to disrupt entire, gravitationally bound, molecular clouds, but is able to disperse small--sized (~10 pc) regions on timescales of less than 1 Myr. Efficient radiative cooling of the supernova remnant as well as strong compression of the surrounding gas result in non-persistent energy and momentum input from the supernovae. However, if the time between subsequent supernovae is short and they are clustered, large hot bubbles form that disperse larger regions of the parental cloud. On longer timescales, supernova feedback increases the amount of gas with moderate temperatures (T~300-3000 K). Despite its inability to disrupt molecular clouds, supernova feedback leaves a strong imprint on the star formation process. We find an overall reduction of the star formation efficiency by a factor of 2 and of the star formation rate by roughly factors of 2-4.

Supernova blast waves in wind-blown bubbles, turbulent, and power-law ambient media

Supernova (SN) blast waves inject energy and momentum into the interstellar medium (ISM), control its turbulent multiphase structure and the launching of galactic outflows. Accurate modelling of the blast wave evolution is therefore essential for ISM and galaxy formation simulations. We present an efficientmethod to compute the input of momentum, thermal energy, and the velocity distribution of the shock-accelerated gas for ambient media (densities of 0.1 > n 0 [cm 3 ] > 100) with uniform (and with stellar wind blown bubbles), power-law, and turbulent (Mach numbers M from 1 100) density distributions. Assuming solar metallicity cooling, the blast wave evolution is followed to the beginning of the momentum conserving snowplough phase. The model recovers previous results for uniform ambient media. The momentum injection in wind-blown bubbles depend on the swept-up mass and the efficiency of cooling, when the blast wave hits the wind shell. For power-law density distributions with n(r) � r 2 (for n(r) > nfloor) the amount of momentum injection is solely regulated by the background density n floor and compares to nuni = nfloor. However, in turbulent ambient media with log-normal density distributions the momentum input can increase by a factor of 2 (compared to the homogeneous case) for high Mach numbers. The average momentum boost can be approximated as

SILCC-Zoom: the dynamic and chemical evolution of molecular clouds

We present 3D ‘zoom-in’ simulations of the formation of two molecular clouds out of the galactic interstellar medium. We model the clouds – identified from the SILCC simulations – with a resolution of up to 0.06 pc using adaptive mesh refinement in combination with a chemical network to follow heating, cooling and the formation of H2 and CO including (self-) shielding. The two clouds are assembled within a few million years with mass growth rates of up to ∼10−2 M⊙ yr−1 and final masses of ∼50 000 M⊙. A spatial resolution of ≲0.1 pc is required for convergence with respect to the mass, velocity dispersion and chemical abundances of the clouds, although these properties also depend on the cloud definition such as based on density thresholds, H2 or CO mass fraction. To avoid grid artefacts, the progressive increase of resolution has to occur within the free-fall time of the densest structures (1–1.5 Myr) and ≳200 time-steps should be spent on each refinement level before the resolution is progressively increased further. This avoids the formation of spurious, large-scale, rotating clumps from unresolved turbulent flows. While CO is a good tracer for the evolution of dense gas with number densities n ≥ 300 cm−3, H2 is also found for n ≲ 30 cm−3 due to turbulent mixing and becomes dominant at column densities around 30–50 M⊙ pc−2. The CO-to-H2 ratio steadily increases within the first 2 Myr, whereas XCO ≃ 1–4 × 1020 cm−2 (K km s−1)−1 is approximately constant since the CO(1−0) line quickly becomes optically thick.

Revealing the dynamics of Class 0 protostellar discs with ALMA

We present synthetic ALMA observations of Keplerian, protostellar discs in the Class 0 stage studying the emission of molecular tracers like (CO)-C-13, (CO)-O-18, HCO+, (HCO+)-C-13, N2H+, and H2CO. We model the emission of discs around low- and intermediate-mass protostars. We show that under optimal observing conditions ALMA is able to detect the discs already in the earliest stage of protostellar evolution, although the emission is often concentrated to the innermost 50 au. Therefore, a resolution of a few 0.1 arcsec might be too low to detect Keplerian discs around Class 0 objects. We also demonstrate that under optimal conditions for edge-on discs Keplerian rotation signatures are recognisable, from which protostellar masses can be inferred. For this we here introduce a new approach, which allows us to determine protostellar masses with higher fidelity than before. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to reveal Keplerian rotation even for strongly inclined discs and that ALMA should be able to detect possible signs of fragmentation in face-on discs. In order to give some guidance for future ALMA observations, we investigate the influence of varying observing conditions and source distances. We show that it is possible to probe Keplerian rotation in inclined discs with an observing time of 2 h and a resolution of 0.1 arcsec, even in the case of moderate weather conditions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that under optimal conditions, Keplerian discs around intermediate-mass protostars should be detectable up to kpc distances.