arXiv subjects

Christopher F. McKee

Publications and source records attributed to Christopher F. McKee.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Reconstructing Deconstruction: High-Velocity Cloud Distance Through Disruption Morphology

We present Arecibo L-band Feed Array 21-cm observations of a sub-complex of HVCs at the tip of the Anti-Center Complex. These observations show morphological details that point to interaction with the ambient halo medium and differential drag within the cloud sub-complex. We develop a new technique for measuring cloud distances, which relies upon these observed morphological and kinematic characteristics, and show that it is consistent with H-alpha distances. These results are consistent with distances to HVCs and halo densities derived from models in which HVCs are formed from cooling halo gas.

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arXiv2006

The Global Evolution of Giant Molecular Clouds. I: Model Formulation and Quasi-Equilibrium Behavior

We present semi-analytic dynamical models for giant molecular clouds evolving under the influence of HII regions launched by newborn star clusters. In contrast to previous work, we neither assume that clouds are in virial or energetic equilibrium, nor do we ignore the effects of star formation feedback. The clouds, which we treat as spherical, can expand and contract homologously. Photoionization drives mass ejection; the recoil of cloud material both stirs turbulent motions and leads to an effective confining pressure. The balance between these effects and the decay of turbulent motions through isothermal shocks determines clouds' dynamical and energetic evolution. We find that for realistic values of the rates of turbulent dissipation, photoevaporation, and energy injection by HII regions, the massive clouds where most molecular gas in the Galaxy resides live for a few crossing times, in good agreement with recent observational estimates that large clouds in local group galaxies survive roughly 20-30 Myr. During this time clouds remain close to equilibrium, with virial parameters of 1-3 and column densities near 10^22 H atoms cm^-2, also in agreement with observed cloud properties. Over their lives they convert 5-10% of their mass into stars, after which point most clouds are destroyed when a large HII region unbinds them. In contrast, small clouds like those found in the solar neighborhood only survive ~1 crossing time before being destroyed.

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arXiv2006

Equilibrium Star Cluster Formation

We argue that rich star clusters take at least several local dynamical times to form, and so are quasi-equilibrium structures during their assembly. Observations supporting this conclusion include morphologies of star-forming clumps, momentum flux of protostellar outflows from forming clusters, age spreads of stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) and other clusters, and the age of a dynamical ejection event from the ONC. We show that these long formation timescales are consistent with the expected star formation rate in turbulent gas, as recently evaluated by Krumholz & McKee. Finally, we discuss the implications of these timescales for star formation efficiencies, the disruption of gas by stellar feedback, mass segregation of stars, and the longevity of turbulence in molecular clumps.

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arXiv2005

On the Hydrodynamic Interaction of Shock Waves with Interstellar Clouds. II. The Effect of Smooth Cloud Boundaries on Cloud Destruction and Cloud Turbulence

The effect of smooth cloud boundaries on the interaction of steady planar shock waves with interstellar clouds is studied using a high-resolution local AMR technique with a second-order accurate axisymmetric Godunov hydrodynamic scheme. A 3D calculation is also done to confirm the results of the 2D ones. We consider an initially spherical cloud whose density distribution is flat near the cloud center and has a power-law profile in the cloud envelope. When an incident shock is transmitted into a smooth cloud, velocity gradients in the cloud envelope steepen the smooth density profile at the upstream side, resulting in a sharp density jump having an arc-like shape. Such a ``slip surface'' forms immediately when a shock strikes a cloud with a sharp boundary. For smoother boundaries, the formation of slip surface and therefore the onset of hydrodynamic instabilities are delayed. Since the slip surface is subject to the Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, the shocked cloud is eventually destroyed in $\sim 3-10$ cloud crushing times. After complete cloud destruction, small blobs formed by fragmentation due to hydrodynamic instabilities have significant velocity dispersions of the order of 0.1 $v_b$, where $v_b$ is the shock velocity in the ambient medium. This suggests that turbulent motions generated by shock-cloud interaction are directly associated with cloud destruction. The interaction of a shock with a cold HI cloud should lead to the production of a spray of small HI shreds, which could be related to the small cold clouds recently observed by Stanimirovic & Heiles (2005). The linewidth-size relation obtained from our 3D simulation is found to be time-dependent. A possibility for gravitational instability triggered by shock compression is also discussed.

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arXiv2005

Radiation Pressure in Massive Star Formation

Stars with masses of >~ 20 solar masses have short Kelvin times that enable them to reach the main sequence while still accreting from their natal clouds. The resulting nuclear burning produces a huge luminosity and a correspondingly large radiation pressure force on dust grains in the accreting gas. This effect may limit the upper mass of stars that can form by accretion. Indeed, simulations and analytic calculations to date have been unable to resolve the mystery of how stars of 50 solar masses and up form. We present two new ideas to solve the radiation pressure problem. First, we use three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic adaptive mesh refinement simulations to study the collapse of massive cores. We find that in three dimensions a configuration in which radiation holds up an infalling envelope is Rayleigh-Taylor unstable, leading radiation driven bubbles to collapse and accretion to continue. We also present Monte Carlo radiative transfer calculations showing that the cavities created by protostellar winds provides a valve that allow radiation to escape the accreting envelope, further reducing the ability of radiation pressure to inhibit accretion.

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arXiv2005

Stars Form By Gravitational Collapse, Not Competitive Accretion

There are now two dominant models of how stars form: gravitational collapse theory holds that star-forming molecular clumps, typically hundreds to thousands of solar masses in mass, fragment into gaseous cores that subsequently collapse to make individual stars or small multiple systems. In contrast, competitive accretion theory suggests that at birth all stars are much smaller than the typical stellar mass (~0.5 solar masses), and that final stellar masses are determined by the subsequent accretion of unbound gas from the clump. Competitive accretion models explain brown dwarfs and free-floating planets as protostars ejected from star-forming clumps before accreting much mass, predicting that they should lack disks, have high velocity dispersions, and form more frequently in denser clumps. They also predict that mean stellar mass should vary within the Galaxy. Here we derive a simple estimate for the rate of competitive accretion as a function of the star-forming environment, based partly on simulations, and determine in what types of environments competitive accretion can occur. We show that no observed star-forming region produces significant competitive accretion, and that simulations that show competitive accretion do so because their properties differ from those determined by observation. Our result shows that stars form by gravitational collapse, and explains why observations have failed to confirm predictions of the competitive accretion scenario.

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arXiv2005

Bondi-Hoyle Accretion in a Turbulent Medium

The Bondi-Hoyle formula gives the approximate accretion rate onto a point particle accreting from a uniform medium. However, in many situations accretion onto point particles occurs from media that are turbulent rather than uniform. In this paper, we give an approximate solution to the problem of a point particle accreting from an ambient medium of supersonically turbulent gas. Accretion in such media is bimodal, at some points resembling classical Bondi-Hoyle flow, and in other cases being closer to the vorticity-dominated accretion flows recently studied by Krumholz, McKee, & Klein. Based on this observation, we develop a theoretical prediction for the accretion rate, and confirm that our predictions are highly consistent with the results of numerical simulations. The distribution of accretion rates is lognormal, and the mean accretion rate in supersonically turbulent gas can be substantially enhanced above the value that would be predicted by a naive application of the Bondi-Hoyle formula. However, it can also be suppressed by the vorticity, just as Krumholz, McKee, & Klein found for non-supersonic vorticity-dominated flows. Magnetic fields, which we have not included in these models, may further inhibit accretion. Our results have significant implications for a number astrophysical problems, ranging from star formation to the black holes in galactic centers. In particular, there are likely to be significant errors in results that assume that accretion from turbulent media occurs at the unmodified Bondi-Hoyle rate, or that are based on simulations that do not resolve the Bondi-Hoyle radius of accreting objects.

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arXiv2005

Far-Infrared Spectral Energy Distributions of Embedded Protostars and Dusty Galaxies: I. Theory for Spherical Sources

We present analytic radiative transfer solutions for the spectra of unresolved, spherically symmetric, centrally heated, dusty sources. We find that the dust thermal spectrum possesses scaling relations that provide a natural classification for a broad range of sources, from low-mass protostars to dusty galaxies. In particular, we find that, given our assumptions, spectral energy distributions (SEDs) can be characterized by two distance-independent parameters, the luminosity-to-mass ratio, $L/M$, and the surface density, $Σ$, for a set of two functions, namely, the density profile and the opacity curve. The goal is to use SEDs as a diagnostic tool in inferring the large-scale physical conditions in protostellar and extragalactic sources, and ultimately, evolutionary parameters. Our approach obviates the need to use SED templates in the millimeter to far-infrared region of the spectrum; this is a common practice in the extragalactic community that relies on observed correlations established at low redshift that may not necessarily extend to high redshift. Further, we demarcate the limited region of parameter space in which density profiles can be inferred from the SED, which is of particular import in the protostellar community as competing theories of star formation are characterized by different density profiles. The functionality of our model is unique in that in provides for a self-consistent analytic solution that we have validated by comparison with a well-tested radiative transfer code (DUSTY) to find excellent agreement with numerical results over a parameter space that spans low-mass protostars to ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGS).

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arXiv2005

A General Theory of Turbulence-Regulated Star Formation, From Spirals to ULIRGs

We derive an analytic prediction for the star formation rate in environments ranging from normal galactic disks to starbursts and ULIRGs in terms of the observables of those systems. Our calculation is based on three premises: (1) star formation occurs in virialized molecular clouds that are supersonically turbulent; (2) the density distribution within these clouds is lognormal, as expected for supersonic isothermal turbulence; (3) stars form in any sub-region of a cloud that is so overdense that its gravitational potential energy exceeds the energy in turbulent motions. We show that a theory based on this model is consistent with simulations and with the observed star formation rate in the Milky Way. We use our theory to derive the Kennicutt-Schmidt Law from first principles, and make other predictions that can be tested by future observations. We also provide an algorithm for estimating the star formation rate that is suitable for inclusion in numerical simulations.

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arXiv2004

How Protostellar Outflows Help Massive Stars Form

We consider the effects of an outflow on radiation escaping from the infalling envelope around a massive protostar. Using numerical radiative transfer calculations, we show that outflows with properties comparable to those observed around massive stars lead to significant anisotropy in the stellar radiation field, which greatly reduces the radiation pressure experienced by gas in the infalling envelope. This means that radiation pressure is a much less significant barrier to massive star formation than has previously been thought.

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arXiv2004

Bondi Accretion in the Presence of Vorticity

The classical Bondi-Hoyle formula gives the accretion rate onto a point particle of a gas with a uniform density and velocity. However, the Bondi-Hoyle problem considers only gas with no net vorticity, while in a real astrophysical situation accreting gas invariably has at least a small amount of vorticity. We therefore consider the related case of accretion of gas with constant vorticity, for the cases of both small and large vorticity. We confirm the findings of earlier two dimensional simulations that even a small amount of vorticity can substantially change both the accretion rate and the morphology of the gas flow lines. We show that in three dimensions the resulting flow field is non-axisymmetric and time dependent. The reduction in accretion rate is due to an accumulation of circulation near the accreting particle. Using a combination of simulations and analytic treatment, we provide an approximate formula for the accretion rate of gas onto a point particle as a function of the vorticity of the surrounding gas.

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arXiv2004

Feedback and Formation of Massive Star Clusters in Giant Molecular Clouds

It is well known that the energy input from massive stars dominates the thermal and mechanical heating of typical regions in the interstellar medium of galaxies. These effects are amplified tremendously in the immediate environment of young massive star clusters, which may contain thousands of O and B stars. We present models of star cluster formation that attempt to account for the interplay between feedback and self-gravity in forming clusters, with application to systems ranging from the Orion Nebula Cluster, the Galactic Center clusters like the Arches, and super star clusters.

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arXiv2003

Embedding Lagrangian Sink Particles in Eulerian Grids

We introduce a new computational method for embedding Lagrangian sink particles into an Eulerian calculation. Simulations of gravitational collapse or accretion generally produce regions whose density greatly exceeds the mean density in the simulation. These dense regions require extremely small time steps to maintain numerical stability. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) codes approach this problem by introducing non-gaseous, accreting sink particles, and Eulerian codes may introduce fixed sink cells. However, until now there has been no approach that allows Eulerian codes to follow accretion onto multiple, moving objects. We have removed that limitation by extending the sink particle capability to Eulerian hydrodynamics codes. We have tested this new method and found that it produces excellent agreement with analytic solutions. In analyzing our sink particle method, we present a method for evaluating the disk viscosity parameter $α$ due to the numerical viscosity of a hydrodynamics code, and use it to compute $α$ for our Cartesian AMR code. We also present a simple application of this new method: studying the transition from Bondi to Bondi-Hoyle accretion that occurs when a shock hits a particle undergoing Bondi accretion.

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arXiv2003

The Formation of the First Stars I. Mass Infall Rates, Accretion Disk Structure and Protostellar Evolution

We present a theoretical model for primordial star formation. First we describe the structure of the initial gas cores as virialized, quasi-hydrostatic objects in accord with recent high resolution numerical studies. The accretion rate can then be related to characteristic densities and temperatures that are set by the cooling properties of molecular hydrogen. We allow for rotation of the gas core, assuming angular momentum conservation inside the sonic point of the flow. In the typical case, most mass then reaches the star via an accretion disk. The structure of the inner region of this disk is described with the standard theory of viscous disks, but with allowance for the substantial energies absorbed in ionizing and dissociating the gas. The size of the protostar and its luminosity depend upon the accretion rate, the energetics of the accreting gas, and the ability of the radiation to escape from the stellar accretion shock. We combine these models for the infall rate, inner disk structure, and protostellar evolution to predict the radiation field that is the basis for radiative feedback processes acting against infall (Paper II). For realistic initial angular momenta, the photosphere of the protostar is much smaller and hotter than in the spherical case, leading to stronger radiative feedback at earlier stages in the evolution. In particular, once the star is older than its Kelvin-Helmholtz time, contraction towards the main sequence causes a rapid increase in ionizing and far-ultraviolet luminosity at masses ~30Msun in the fiducial case. Since the cores out of which the first stars formed were much more massive than 30Msun and since feedback is dynamically unimportant at lower masses, we conclude that the first stars should have had masses >~30Msun.

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arXiv2003

Outflow-Confined HII Regions and the Formation of Massive Stars by Accretion

If massive stars form by disk accretion, then bipolar outflows should be generated as in the case of low-mass star formation. High accretion rates lead to high outflow rates and make the wind density very large near the protostar. We therefore predict that massive protostars have very small, jet-like HII regions confined by their outflows; we identify these HII regions with "hypercompact" (<0.01 pc) HII regions. Their lifetime is approximately equal to the accretion timescale (~10^5 yr), much longer than the sound-crossing and dynamical timescales of the ionized region. We present an analytic description of the density distribution of the outflow, relate the overall mass loss rate to the accretion rate, and normalize to values appropriate to massive protostars. For a given ionizing luminosity, we calculate the extent of the HII region and its radio spectrum. A detailed comparison is made with observations of radio source "I" in the Orion Hot Core. The spectra and morphologies of many other sources are broadly consistent with this model. We argue that confinement of ionization allows disk and equatorial accretion to continue up to high masses, potentially overcoming a major difficulty of standard accretion models.

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arXiv2002

Mass Limits to Primordial Star Formation from Protostellar Feedback

How massive were the first stars? This question is of fundamental importance for galaxy formation and cosmic reionization. Here we consider how protostellar feedback can limit the mass of a forming star. For this we must understand the rate at which primordial protostars accrete, how they and their feedback output evolve, and how this feedback interacts with the infalling matter. We describe the accretion rate with an ``isentropic accretion'' model: the rate is initially very large (~0.03 M_sun/yr when m_* =1 M_sun) and declines as m_*^{-3/7}. Protostellar evolution is treated with a model that tracks the total energy of the star. A key difference compared to previous studies is allowance for rotation of the infalling envelope. This leads to photospheric conditions at the star and dramatic differences in the feedback. Two feedback mechanisms are considered: HII region breakout and radiation pressure from Lyman-alpha and FUV photons. Radiation pressure appears to be the dominant mechanism for suppressing infall, becoming dynamically important around 20 M_sun.

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arXiv2002

The Formation of Massive Stars from Turbulent Cores

Observations indicate that massive stars form in regions of very high surface density, ~1 g cm^-2. Clusters containing massive stars and globular clusters have a comparable column density. The total pressure in clouds of such a column density is P/k~10^8-10^9 K cm^-3, far greater than that in the diffuse ISM or the average in GMCs. Observations show that massive star-forming regions are supersonically turbulent, and we show that the molecular cores out of which individual massive stars form are as well. The protostellar accretion rate in such a core is approximately equal to the instantaneous mass of the star divided by the free-fall time of the gas that is accreting onto the star (Stahler, Shu, & Taam 1980). The star-formation time in this Turbulent Core model for massive star formation is several mean free-fall timesscales of the core, but is about equal to that of the region in which the core is embedded. The typical time for a massive star to form is about 10^5 yr and the accretion rate is high enough to overcome radiation pressure due to the luminosity of the star. For the typical case we consider, in which the cores out of which the stars form have a density structure varying as r^{-1.5}, the protostellar accretion rate grows linearly with time. We calculate the evolution of the radius of a protostar and determine the accretion luminosity. At the high accretion rates that are typical in regions of massive star formation, protostars join the main sequence at about 20 solar masses. We apply these results to predict the properties of protostars thought to be powering several observed hot molecular cores, including the Orion hot core and W3(H2O). In the Appendixes, we discuss the pressure in molecular clouds and we argue that ``logatropic'' models for molecular clouds are incompatible with observation.

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arXiv2002

The Formation of Massive Stars and Star Clusters

We model the formation of high-mass stars, specifying the accretion rate in terms of the instantaneous and final mass of the star, the ambient pressure of the star-forming region and the form of polytropic pressure support of the pre-stellar gas core. The high pressures typical of Galactic regions of massive star formation allow a 100 solar mass star to form in ~10^5 years with a final accretion rate ~10^-3 solar masses per year. By modeling protostellar evolution we predict the properties of several nearby massive protostars. We model cluster formation by applying this theory to many stars. We use the observed intensity of outflows from protoclusters to estimate the star formation rate, finding that clusters take at least several free-fall times to form; for a cluster similar to the Orion Nebula Cluster, we predict a formation timescale of ~1x10^6 years.

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