Time-dependent accretion and ejection implied by pre-stellar density profiles

Abstract

Recent observations suggest that mass ejection and mass accretion both decline significantly with time during early protostellar evolution (Bontemps et al. 1996). In the present paper, we propose that this rapid decay of accretion/ejection activity is a direct result of the non-singular density profiles characterizing pre-collapse clouds. The radial density profiles of pre-stellar cores are indeed found to be much flatter than rho(r) ~ r(-2) at radii less than a few thousand AU (Ward-Thompson et al. 1994). Here we show, through Lagrangian analytical calculations, that the supersonic gravitational collapse of pre-stellar cloud cores with centrally peaked, but flattened density profiles leads to a transitory phase of energetic accretion immediately following the formation of the central hydrostatic protostar. Physically, the flat inner region collapses first nearly homologously to form a finite mass stellar nucleus, and the remaining cloud core material then accretes supersonically onto a non-zero point mass. Enhanced accretion persists as long as the gravitational pull of this initial point mass, which does not exist in the Shu singular solution, remains significant. We suggest that this epoch of vigorous accretion coincides with Class 0 protostars, which would explain their unusually powerful jets compared to the more evolved Class I objects. We also use a simple two-component power-law model to fit the diagrams of outflow power versus envelope mass observed by Bontemps et al. (1996), and suggest that rho Ophiuchi and Taurus young stellar objects follow different accretion histories because of differing initial conditions.