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Recent simulations of clustered star formation have incorporated many
physical processes, yet coupling radiative transfer to the hydrodynamics
has proved to be a difficult problem. We attempt to simplify this problem
by making approximations to the heating and cooling terms in the energy
equations.
Although the interstellar medium out of which stars form today consists of
only about 1% dust grains by mass, dust grains play a vital role in
transporting energy from the star to the surrounding gas. Dust grains are
heated more efficiently than gas particles because of their broadband
absorption properties. Then the gas particles are heated by the dust
grains through collisions. We use a continuum radiative transfer
algorithm to determine the dust temperature near a young star. Then the
gas temperature is determined by balancing the heating (primarily due to
collisions with hot dust grains) and cooling (mainly CO cooling) terms in
the energy equations.
Combining a recently developed hydrodynamics algorithm, SPH with
particle-splitting, with a simplified heating-cooling algorithm,
we plan to study the formation of young stars in a cluster while
stars form nearby and heat the surrounding medium.
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