The interaction of ionizing and far-ultraviolet radiation with the interstellar medium is of great importance. It results in the formation of regions in which the gas is ionized, beyond which are ...photodissociation regions (PDRs) in which the gas transitions to its atomic and molecular form. Several numerical codes have been implemented to study these two main phases of the interstellar medium either dynamically or chemically. In this paper we present torus-3dpdr, a new self-consistent code for treating the chemistry of three-dimensional photoionization and photodissociation regions. It is an integrated code coupling the two codes torus, a hydrodynamics and Monte Carlo radiation transport code, and 3d-pdr, a PDRs code. The new code uses a Monte Carlo radiative transfer scheme to account for the propagation of the ionizing radiation including the diffusive component as well as a ray-tracing scheme based on the healpix package in order to account for the escape probability and column density calculations. Here, we present the numerical techniques we followed and we show the capabilities of the new code in modelling three-dimensional objects including single or multiple sources. We discuss the effects introduced by the diffusive component of the ultraviolet field in determining the thermal balance of PDRs as well as the effects introduced by a multiple sources treatment of the radiation field. With this new code, three-dimensional synthetic observations for the major cooling lines are possible, for making feasible a detailed comparison between hydrodynamical simulations and observations.
We present high-resolution (∼300 au) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of the massive young stellar object G11.92-0.61 MM 1. We resolve the immediate circumstellar environment ...of MM 1 in 1.3 mm continuum emission and CH3CN emission for the first time. The object divides into two main sources-MM 1a, which is the source of a bipolar molecular outflow, and MM 1b, located 0 57 (1920 au) to the southeast. The main component of MM 1a is an elongated continuum structure, perpendicular to the bipolar outflow, with a size of 0 141 × 0 050 (480 × 170 au). The gas kinematics toward MM 1a probed via CH3CN trace a variety of scales. The lower energy J = 12-11 K = 3 line traces extended, rotating gas within the outflow cavity, while the v8 = 1 line shows a clearly resolved Keplerian rotation signature. Analysis of the gas kinematics and dust emission shows that the total enclosed mass in MM 1a is 40 5 M (where between 2.2 and 5.8 M is attributed to the disk), while MM 1b is <0.6 M . The extreme mass ratio and orbital properties of MM 1a and MM 1b suggest that MM 1b is one of the first observed examples of the formation of a binary star via disk fragmentation around a massive young (proto)star.
Collisions between giant molecular clouds are a potential mechanism for triggering the formation of massive stars, or even super star clusters. The trouble is identifying this process observationally ...and distinguishing it from other mechanisms. We produce synthetic position–velocity diagrams from models of cloud–cloud collisions, non-interacting clouds along the line of sight, clouds with internal radiative feedback and a more complex cloud evolving in a galactic disc, to try and identify unique signatures of collision. We find that a broad bridge feature connecting two intensity peaks, spatially correlated but separated in velocity, is a signature of a high-velocity cloud–cloud collision. We show that the broad bridge feature is resilient to the effects of radiative feedback, at least to around 2.5 Myr after the formation of the first massive (ionizing) star. However for a head-on 10 km s−1 collision, we find that this will only be observable from 20 to 30 per cent of viewing angles. Such broad–bridge features have been identified towards M20, a very young region of massive star formation that was concluded to be a site of cloud–cloud collision by Torii et al., and also towards star formation in the outer Milky Way by Izumi et al.
starbench: the D-type expansion of an H ii region Bisbas, T. G; Haworth, T. J; Williams, R. J. R ...
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
10/2015, Volume:
453, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
starbench is a project focused on benchmarking and validating different star formation and stellar feedback codes. In this first starbench paper we perform a comparison study of the D-type expansion ...of an H ii region. The aim of this work is to understand the differences observed between the 12 participating numerical codes against the various analytical expressions examining the D-type phase of H ii region expansion. To do this, we propose two well-defined tests which are tackled by 1D and 3D grid- and smoothed particle hydrodynamics-based codes. The first test examines the ‘early phase’ D-type scenario during which the mechanical pressure driving the expansion is significantly larger than the thermal pressure of the neutral medium. The second test examines the ‘late phase’ D-type scenario during which the system relaxes to pressure equilibrium with the external medium. Although they are mutually in excellent agreement, all 12 participating codes follow a modified expansion law that deviates significantly from the classical Spitzer solution in both scenarios. We present a semi-empirical formula combining the two different solutions appropriate to both early and late phases that agrees with high-resolution simulations to ≲ 2 per cent. This formula provides a much better benchmark solution for code validation than the Spitzer solution. The present comparison has validated the participating codes and through this project we provide a data set for calibrating the treatment of ionizing radiation hydrodynamics codes.
The dangers of being trigger-happy Dale, J. E; Haworth, T. J; Bressert, E
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
06/2015, Volume:
450, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We examine the evidence offered for triggered star formation against the backdrop provided by recent numerical simulations of feedback from massive stars at or below giant molecular cloud sizescales. ...We compile a catalogue of 67 observational papers, mostly published over the last decade, and examine the signposts most commonly used to infer the presence of triggered star formation. We then determine how well these signposts perform in a recent suite of hydrodynamic simulations of star formation including feedback from O-type stars performed by Dale et al. We find that none of the observational markers improve the chances of correctly identifying a given star as triggered by more than factors of 2 at most. This limits the fidelity of these techniques in interpreting star formation histories. We therefore urge caution in interpreting observations of star formation near feedback-driven structures in terms of triggering.
Radiation hydrodynamics (RHD) simulations are used to study many astrophysical phenomena; however, they require the use of simplified radiation transport and thermal prescriptions to reduce ...computational cost. In this paper, we present a systematic study of the importance of microphysical processes in RHD simulations using the example of D-type H ii region expansion. We compare the simplest hydrogen-only models with those that include: ionization of H, He, C, N, O, S and Ne, different gas metallicity, non-LTE metal-line-blanketed stellar spectral models of varying metallicity, radiation pressure, dust and treatment of photodissociation regions. Each of these processes is explicitly treated using modern numerical methods rather than parametrization. In line with expectations, changes due to microphysics in either the effective number of ionizing photons or the thermal structure of the gas lead to differences in D-type expansion. In general, we find that more realistic calculations lead to the onset of D-type expansion at smaller radii and a slower subsequent expansion. Simulations of star-forming regions using simplified microphysics are therefore likely overestimating the strength of radiative feedback. We find that both variations in gas metallicity and the inclusion of dust can affect the ionization front evolution at the 10–20 per cent level over 500 kyr, which could substantially modify the results of simplified 3D models including feedback. Stellar metallicity, radiation pressure and the inclusion of photodissociation regions are all less-significant effects at the 1 per cent level or less, rendering them of minor importance in the modelling the dynamical evolution of H ii regions.
Context.
Chemical modelling serves two purposes in dynamical models: accounting for the effect of microphysics on the dynamics and providing observable signatures. Ideally, the former must be done as ...part of the hydrodynamic simulation but this comes with a prohibitive computational cost that leads to many simplifications being used in practice.
Aims.
We aim to produce a statistical emulator that replicates a full chemical model capable of solving the temperature and abundances of a gas through time. This emulator should suffer only a minor loss of accuracy when compared to a full chemical solver and would have a fraction of the computational cost allowing it to be included in a dynamical model.
Methods.
The gas-grain chemical code UCLCHEM was updated to include heating and cooling processes, and a large dataset of model outputs from possible starting conditions was produced. A neural network was then trained to map directly from inputs to outputs.
Results.
Chemulator replicates the outputs of UCLCHEM with an overall mean squared error (MSE) of 1.7 × 10
−4
for a single time step of 1000 yr, and it is shown to be stable over 1000 iterations with an MSE of 3 × 10
−3
on the log-scaled temperature after one timzze step and 6 × 10
−3
after 1000 time steps. Chemulator was found to be approximately 50 000 times faster than the time-dependent model it emulates but can introduce a significant error to some models.
Understanding high-mass star formation is one of the top-priority issues in astrophysics. Recent observational studies have revealed that cloud-cloud collisions may play a role in high-mass star ...formation in several places in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Trifid Nebula M20 is a well-known Galactic H ii region ionized by a single O7.5 star. In 2011, based on the CO observations with NANTEN2, we reported that the O star was formed by the collision between two molecular clouds ∼0.3 Myr ago. Those observations identified two molecular clouds toward M20, traveling at a relative velocity of . This velocity separation implies that the clouds cannot be gravitationally bound to M20, but since the clouds show signs of heating by the stars there they must be spatially coincident with it. A collision is therefore highly possible. In this paper we present the new CO J = 1-0 and J = 3-2 observations of the colliding clouds in M20 performed with the Mopra and ASTE telescopes. The high-resolution observations revealed that the two molecular clouds have peculiar spatial and velocity structures, i.e., a spatially complementary distribution between the two clouds and a bridge feature that connects the two clouds in velocity space. Based on a new comparison with numerical models, we find that this complementary distribution is an expected outcome of cloud-cloud collisions, and that the bridge feature can be interpreted as the turbulent gas excited at the interface of the collision. Our results reinforce the cloud-cloud collision scenario in M20.
Abstract
In this paper we provide a comprehensive description of the internal dynamics of G0.253+0.016 (a.k.a. ‘the Brick’); one of the most massive and dense molecular clouds in the Galaxy to lack ...signatures of widespread star formation. As a potential host to a future generation of high-mass stars, understanding largely quiescent molecular clouds like G0.253+0.016 is of critical importance. In this paper, we reanalyse Atacama Large Millimeter Array cycle 0 HNCO J = 4(0, 4) − 3(0, 3) data at 3 mm, using two new pieces of software that we make available to the community. First, scousepy, a Python implementation of the spectral line fitting algorithm scouse. Secondly, acorns (Agglomerative Clustering for ORganising Nested Structures), a hierarchical n-dimensional clustering algorithm designed for use with discrete spectroscopic data. Together, these tools provide an unbiased measurement of the line-of-sight velocity dispersion in this cloud, $\sigma _{v_{\mathrm{ los}}, {\rm 1D}}=4.4\pm 2.1$ km s−1, which is somewhat larger than predicted by velocity dispersion-size relations for the central molecular zone (CMZ). The dispersion of centroid velocities in the plane of the sky are comparable, yielding $\sigma _{v_{\mathrm{ los}}, {\rm 1D}}/\sigma _{v_{\mathrm{ pos}}, {\rm 1D}}\sim 1.2\pm 0.3$. This isotropy may indicate that the line-of-sight extent of the cloud is approximately equivalent to that in the plane of the sky. Combining our kinematic decomposition with radiative transfer modelling, we conclude that G0.253+0.016 is not a single, coherent, and centrally condensed molecular cloud; ‘the Brick’ is not a brick. Instead, G0.253+0.016 is a dynamically complex and hierarchically structured molecular cloud whose morphology is consistent with the influence of the orbital dynamics and shear in the CMZ.
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