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In this work we give a detailed description of the assembly of protostars
in supersonic molecular clouds. Based on the results of self-consistent,
three-dimensional, AMR simulations of collapsing cloud cores which are
formed in a supersonic, turbulent, molecular clouds, we show that the
formation of protostellar disks and stars proceeds through different
stages where each stage is associated with a characteristic scale.
In particular, cloud cores which emerge from oblique shocks collapse to a
filament and develops a turbulent protostellar disk close to the center the
filament. This outside-in assembly of protostars is closely related to the
formation of the first stars/galaxies from cosmological fluctuations
and contrary to the monolithic collapse models of supercritical
hydrostatic cores.
For this calculations, we include all important chemical and radiative
processes such as cooling by molecular line emission, cooling by gas-dust
interaction, radiative diffusion in the optical thick regime, and H2
formation and dissociation.
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