Fragmentation of rotating protostellar clouds
Abstract
Through numerical modeling, the behavior of rotating, isothermal gas clouds as they collapse from Jeans unstable configurations is examined in an attempt to determine whether they are susceptible to fragmentation during the dynamic collapse phase of their evolution. Nonaxisymmetric fragmentation in collapsing, rotating gas clouds are also examined. A 3-D hydrodynamic computer code is described that was developed to study the problem numerically. It was found that rotating gas clouds in which pressure forces play a nonnegligible role are not susceptible to nonaxisymmetric fragmentation during a phase of dynamic collapse. The work favors a picture of star formation in the galactic disk which permits fragmentation of a gas cloud only during quasi-equilibrium phases of its evolution.
- Publication:
-
Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- 1978
- Bibcode:
- 1978PhDT.........6T
- Keywords:
-
- Cloud Dispersal;
- Clouds;
- Fragmentation;
- Mathematical Models;
- Cloud Physics;
- Collapse;
- Computer Programs;
- Numerical Analysis;
- Rotating Plasmas;
- Stellar Evolution;
- Astrophysics