Clumpy shocks and the clump mass function

Abstract

In this paper, we examine whether clumpy, colliding, flows could be responsible for the clump mass functions that have been observed in several regions of embedded star formation, which have been shown to be described by a Salpeter type slope. The flows presented here, which comprise a population of initially identical clumps and the calculations are performed with and without the inclusion of self-gravity. When the shock region is at its densest, we find that the clump mass spectrum is always well modelled by a Salpeter type slope. This is true regardless of whether the self-gravity is included in the simulations or not. In the non-self-gravitating simulations, this slope is retained at lower Mach numbers (Mach 5 and 10) as the simulations progress past the densest phase. In the simulations which include self-gravity, we find that low Mach number runs yield a flatter mass function after the densest phase. This is simply a result of increased coagulation due to gravitational collapse of the flows. In the high Mach number runs (Mach 20) the Salpeter slope is always lost. The self gravitating calculations also show that the sub-group of gravitationally bound clumps in which star formation occurs, always contain the most massive clumps in the population. The mass function of these bound star forming clumps is not at all similar to the Salpeter type mass function observed for stars in the field. We conclude that the clump mass function may not only have nothing to do with gravity, but also nothing to do with the star formation process and the resulting mass distribution of stars. This raises doubt over the claims that the clump mass function is the origin of the stellar IMF, for regions such as rho Oph, Serpens and the Orion B cloud.