Flows, Fragmentation, and Star Formation. I. Low-Mass Stars in Taurus

By L. Hartmann. 2002

173 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The remarkably filamentary spatial distribution of young stars in the Taurus molecular cloud has significant implications for understanding low-mass star formation in relatively quiescent conditions. The large scale and regular spacing of the filaments suggests that small-scale turbulence is of limited importance, which could be consistent with the driving on large scales by flows that produced the cloud. The small spatial dispersion of stars from gaseous filaments indicates that the low-mass stars are generally born with small velocity dispersions relative to their natal gas, of the order of the sound speed or less. The spatial distribution of the stars exhibits a mean separation of about 0.25 pc, comparable to the estimated Jeans length in the densest gaseous filaments, and is consistent with roughly uniform density along the filaments. The efficiency of star formation in filaments is much higher than elsewhere, with an associated higher frequency of protostars and accreting T Tauri stars. The protostellar cores are generally aligned with the filaments, suggesting that they are produced by gravitational fragmentation, resulting in initially quasi-prolate cores. Given the absence of massive stars that could strongly dominate cloud dynamics, Taurus provides important tests of theories of dispersed low-mass star formation and numerical simulations of molecular cloud structure and evolution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a2204c7aa27bad81220512d5c0a84e734de81b3c

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Citations in the corpus

The big problems in star formation: The star formation rate, stellar clustering, and the initial mass function (2014, background): “However, there are breaks at both large and small scales, indicating deviations from scale-free behavior (e.g., Gomez et al. 1993; Larson 1995; Simon 1997; Bate et al. 1998; Nakajima et al. 1998; Hartmann 2002; Hennekemper et al. 2008; Kraus & Hillenbrand 2008; Schmeja et al. 2009).”
The Disk Population of the Chamaeleon I Star-forming Region (2008, background): “…find that they are highly clustered and are concentrated near dense molecular gas, which are typical properties of class I objects in embedded clusters (Hartmann 2002; Lada et al. 2000, 2004; Teixeira et al. 2006; Muench et al. 2007; Allen et al. 2007; Gutermuth et al. 2007; Winston et al. 2007).”
The Stellar Mass Spectrum from Non-Isothermal Gravoturbulent Fragmentation (2004, unknown): “This is also supported by the fact that many observed star-forming clouds have filamentary structure, and by the evidence that much of the star formation in these clouds occurs in filaments (Schneider & Elmegreen 1979; Larson 1985; Curry 2002; Hartmann 2002).”
The physics of star formation (2003, background): “…such configurations might be more realistic than sheets, given the often filamentary appearance of molecular clouds (Schneider and Elmegreen 1979; Hartmann 2002) and the frequent tendency of numerical simulations of cloud collapse and fragmentation to develop filamentary structure (Larson 1972a;…”
Turbulent molecular clouds (2012, background): “Moreover, in the case of the Taurus molecular cloud, Hartmann (2002) shows that the protostars distribution closely follows the filament network identified by Mizuno et al. (1995).”
A census of dense cores in the Aquila cloud complex: SPIRE/PACS observations from the Herschel Gould Belt survey (2015, background): “While molecular clouds were already known to exhibit large-scale filamentary structures long before Herschel (e.g., Schneider & Elmegreen 1979; Hartmann 2002; Myers 2009), the Herschel observations from the HGBS (e.g., Men’shchikov et al. 2010; Miville-Deschênes et al. 2010) and other imaging…”
Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function (2003, background): “…(Figure 11), implying that even in low-density star formation regions, the initial collapse is triggered by large-scale turbulent dissipation, but the final cores are formed essentially by (dynamic) gravitational fragmentation in subsonic flows (see e.g. Hartmann 2002, Padoan et al. 2003b).”
Large-Scale Structure of the Molecular Gas in Taurus Revealed by High Linear Dynamic Range Spectral Line Mapping (2008, background): “As noted by Hartmann (2002), the young stars are grouped in three nearly parallel bands that are associated with Heiles’ Cloud 2/L1521/B213/L1495, B18/L1506, and L1536.”
Collapse and Fragmentation in Finite Sheets (2004, background): “For example, small-scale driving of turbulence is employed in many numerical simulations to form stellar mass concentrations, but this may not be consistent with large-scale structure such as extended massive filaments seen in many clouds (e.g., Schneider & Elmegreen 1979; Hartmann 2002).”
Implications for the formation of star clusters from extragalactic star formation rates (2004, methodology): “The data for these assumptions are taken from Briceño et al. (2002), Kroupa (2001), Hartmann (2002), Massey & Hunter (1998), Palla & Stahler (2002) and Selman et al. (1999).”
THE DISK POPULATION OF THE TAURUS STAR-FORMING REGION (2009, background): “As previously observed in Taurus (Hartmann 2002), we find that the positions of the class I and II members closely follow the distribution of dense gas while the class III stars are more widely distributed.”
The T Tauri Phase Down to Nearly Planetary Masses: Echelle Spectra of 82 Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs (2005, background): “…of Ṁ versus mass, the vast majority of the higher mass CTTSs (and many of the accreting VLMSs and BDs as well) reside in Taurus; observationally, these objects still appear lined up along the dense gas filaments in which they were presumably born (Hartmann 2002; Briceño et al. 2002).”
Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium (2014, background): “Examples of star formation in small groups and associations are found in the Taurus-Aurigae molecular cloud (Hartmann, 2002).”
An ALMA study of the Orion Integral Filament: I. Evidence for narrow fibers in a massive cloud (2018, background): “Hacar et al. (2013) demonstrated that the apparently monolithic B213-L1495 filament (Mlin ∼ 50 M pc−1; Barnard et al. 1927; Hartmann 2002; Palmeirim et al. 2013) is actually a bundle of smallscale fibers.”
Dense core formation by fragmentation of velocity-coherent filaments in L1517 (2011, methodology): “This two-step scenario of core formation has already been proposed by several authors based on different considerations, and it therefore seems to apply to more regions than just the one studied here (Schneider & Elmegreen 1979; Hartmann 2002; Myers 2009).”
Cores, filaments, and bundles: hierarchical core formation in the L1495/B213 Taurus region (2013, background): “(See also Schneider & Elmegreen 1979; Johnstone & Bally 1999; Hartmann 2002; Myers 2009 for previous work emphasizing the importance of filaments in core formation.)”
Star and Protoplanetary Disk Properties in Orion's Suburbs (2009, background): “As noted before by numerous authors (e.g. Hartmann 2002; Megeath et al. 2005a; Evans et al. 2009), the distribution of Class 0/I sources closely follows the densest parts of the molecular cloud as traced by the13CO data, and shows a filamentary structure.”
FILAMENTARY STRUCTURE OF STAR-FORMING COMPLEXES (2009, background): “The internal structure of individual filaments has been studied by many authors, but there has been less discussion of the spatial relation of neighboring filaments (Schneider & Elmegreen 1979, Mizuno et al 1995, Lada, Alves & Lada 1999, Hartmann 2002, Goldsmith et al 2008).”