The Role of Large Scale Gravity and Turbulence in Star Formation Eve Lee Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, Toronto, Canada
Classically, star formation was thought to be a slow and inefficient process with only 2% of giant molecular cloud (GMC) mass turning into stars in a free-fall time. Turbulent support, magnetic support, and dispersal of gas via stellar feedback have been proposed as the cause of this low star formation efficiency (SFE). Recent numerical simulations and observations, however, suggest a much more rapid star formation process with SFE at ~10-20% or more. We perform a 16pc-scale numerical simulation of driven, supersonic, self-gravitating, hydrodynamic turbulence with the formation of star particles. We confirm a high SFE even in the presence of driven turbulence and propose that, first, turbulence does not provide sufficient support against gravity, and second, that the large-scale gravity, rather than local accretion, is the dominant driver of the rapid star formation.
Collaborators: P. Chang, UWM, USA N. Murray, CITA, Canada