arXiv subjects

Francesco Palla

Publications and source records attributed to Francesco Palla.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2005

Pulsating young brown dwarfs

We present the results of a nonadiabatic, linear stability analysis of models of very low-mass stars (VLMSs) and brown dwarfs (BDs) during the deuterium burning phase in the center. We find unstable fundamental modes with periods varying between ~5 hr for a 0.1 Msun star and ~1 hr for a 0.02 Msun BD. The growth time of the instability decreases with decreasing mass and remains well below the deuterium burning time scale in the mass range considered (0.1--0.02 Msun). These results are robust against variations of the relevant input physics in the evolutionary models. We identify possible candidates for pulsational variability among known VLMSs and BDs in nearby star forming regions whose location in the HR diagram falls within or close to the boundary of the instability strip. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the variability observed in a few objects with periods of ~1 hr can be interpreted in terms of pulsation.

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arXiv2004

Current views on low-mass star formation

The process that leads to the formation and early evolution of low-mass stars is in a broad sense well understood theoretically and carefully traced observationally. The largest uncertainties in this framework reside in the poorly known initial conditions for the origin and gravitational collapse of dense cores within molecular clouds. In this review, we will discuss the evidence for an accelerated pattern of star formation in clusters and associations, the physical origin of this phenomenon, and the age spread in low-mass star forming regions. On the latter issue, we will show how the observation of lithium depletion in young clusters, such as the Orion Nebula Cluster and the Upper Scorpius association, can provide an independent estimate of their ages and age spreads with important implications on the understanding of the initial conditions and history of star formation.

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arXiv2004

Age spreads in clusters and associations: the lithium test

We report the evidence that several low-mass stars (<~0.4 Msun) of the Orion and Upper Scorpius clusters have lithium abundances well below the interstellar value. Due to time-dependent depletion, our result implies stellar ages greater than ~5 Myr, suggesting that star formation has been proceeding for a long time in these systems.

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arXiv2004

The Pre--Main-Sequence of A-type stars

Young A-type stars in the pre--main-sequence (PMS) evolutionary phase are particularly interesting objects since they cover the mass range (1.5-4 solar ma sses) which is most sensitive to the internal conditions inherited during the protostellar phase. In particular, they undergo a process of thermal relaxation from which they emerge as fully radiative objects contracting towards the main sequence. A-type stars also show intense surface activity (including winds, accretion, pulsations) whose origin is still not completely understood, and infrared excesses related to the presence of circumstellar disks and envelopes. Disks display significant evolution in the dust properties, likely signalling the occurrence of protoplanetary growth. Finally, A-type stars are generally found in multiple systems and small aggregates of lower mass companions.

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arXiv2003

Dispersion in the lifetime and accretion rate of T Tauri discs

We compare evolutionary models for protoplanetary discs that include disc winds with observational determinations of the disc lifetime and accretion rate in Taurus. Using updated estimates for stellar ages in Taurus, together with published classifications, we show that the evolution of the disc fraction with stellar age is similar to that derived for ensembles of stars within young clusters. Around 30 percent of stars lose their discs within 1 Myr, while the remainder have disc lifetimes that are typically in the 1-10 Myr range. We show that the latter range of ages is consistent with theoretical models for disc evolution, provided that there is a dispersion of around 0.5 in the log of the initial disc mass. The same range of initial conditions brackets the observed variation in the accretion rate of Classical T Tauri stars at a given age. We discuss the expected lifetime of discs in close binary systems, and show that our models predict that the disc lifetime is almost constant for separations exceeding 10 au. This implies a low predicted fraction of binaries that pair a Classical T Tauri star with a Weak-lined T Tauri star, and is in better agreement with observations of the disc lifetime in binaries than disc models that do not include disc mass loss in a wind.

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arXiv2002

Star Formation in Space and Time: Taurus-Auriga

To understand the formation of stellar groups, one must first document carefully the birth pattern within real clusters and associations. In this study of Taurus-Auriga, we combine pre-main-sequence ages from our own evolutionary tracks with stellar positions from observational surveys. Aided by the extensive, millimeter data on the molecular clouds, we develop a picture of the region's history. Star formation began, at a relatively low level and in a spatially diffuse manner, at least 10 Myr in the past. Within the last few million years, new stars have been produced at an accelerating rate, almost exclusively within a confined group of striated cloud filaments. The gas both inside and around the filaments appears to be in force balance. Thus, the appearance of the filaments is due to global, quasi-static contraction of the parent cloud material. Gravity drives this contraction and shock dissipation mediates it, but the internal motion of the gas does not appear to be turbulent. The accelerating nature of recent star formation means that the condensation of cloud cores is a threshold phenomenon, requiring a minimum background density. Other, nearby cloud regions, including Lupus and Chamaeleon, contain some locales that have attained this density, and others that have not. In the latter, we find extensive and sometimes massive molecular gas that is still devoid of young stars.

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arXiv2001

Binary Masses as a Test for Pre-Main-Sequence Models

Observations of binaries have traditionally provided the means for ascertaining stellar masses. Here, we use the published data on 8 pre-main-sequence pairs to gauge the accuracy of our own, recently calculated, evolutionary tracks (Palla & Stahler 1999). We consider both eclipsing, double-lined spectroscopic binaries, which provide the mass of each star separately, and non-eclipsing, double-lined systems, which yield only the ratio. We also analyze the visual, quadruple system GG Tau, for which the sum of the two component masses follows from observations of the circumbinary disk. In almost all cases, our theoretically derived masses or mass ratios are in good agreement with the empirical values. For two binaries (NTTS 162814-2427 and P1540), the observational results are still too uncertain for a proper comparison. We also find that the derived contraction ages within each pre-main-sequence pair are nearly equal. This result extends earlier findings regarding visual pairs, and indicates that the components of all binaries form in proximity, perhaps within the same dense cloud core. Finally, our study reveals that the Trapezium star BM Ori is very young, since both the star itself and its companion have contraction ages less than 10^5 years.

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arXiv2000

Effects of the X-ray emission from young stars on the ionization level of a fractal star forming cloud

We present the initial results of a study aimed at computing the global effects of the X-ray ionization due to young stars within a molecular cloud that forms stars with a standard IMF at a rate accelerating with time. We model the gas distribution of the cloud as a fractal of dimension 2.3. We introduce the concept of a "Roentgen sphere" as the region around each PMS star where the ionization rate due to stellar X-rays exceeds that due to interstellar cosmic rays. Using values of the X-ray luminosity typical of T Tauri stars, we find that within the Roentgen radius the average ionization rate is increased by a factor 4 to 20 with respect to the value obtained from cosmic-rays.

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arXiv2000

The Onset of Cluster Formation around Intermediate Mass Stars

We present the results of a recent near-infrared survey of the fields surrounding a large sample of intermediate-mass pre-main-sequence (Herbig Ae/Be) stars. While late-type Be and Ae stars are never associated with conspicuous groups of young lower mass stars, early-type Be stars are usually found within rich clusters. This finding has been tested against possible biases due to different mass sensitivity of the observations or dynamical dissipation of the clusters around older stars. Our results suggest that massive stars are preferentially produced in dense stellar clusters, possibly by dynamical interaction rather than by standard gas accretion as in the case of lower mass stars. The possibility that the observed correlation between maximum stellar mass and cluster richness could be the results of random sampling the cluster size spectrum and the stellar IMF is also discussed. Future observational tests capable of discriminating between these two competitive models are outlined.

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arXiv2000

A search for precursors of Ultracompact HII Regions in a sample of luminous IRAS sources. III: Circumstellar Dust Properties

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope has been used to obtain submillimeter and millimeter continuum photometry of a sample of 30 IRAS sources previously studied in molecular lines and centimeter radio continuum. All the sources have IRAS colours typical of very young stellar objects (YSOs) and are associated with dense gas. In spite of their high luminosities (L>10000 solar units), only ten of these sources are also associated with a radio counterpart. In 17 cases we could identify a clear peak of millimeter emission associated with the IRAS source, while in 9 sources the millimeter emission was extended or faint and a clear peak could not be identified; upper limits were found in 4 cases only. Using simple greybody fitting model to the observed SED, we derive global properties of the circumstellar dust. The dust temperature varies from 24 K to 45 K, while the exponent of the dust emissivity vs frequency power-law spans a range 1.56<beta<2.38, characteristic of silicate dust; total circumstellar masses range up to more than 500 solar masses. We find that for sources with comparable luminosities, the total column densities derived from the dust masses do not distinguish between sources with and without radio counterpart. We interpret this result as an indication that dust does not play a dominant role in inhibiting the formation of the HII region. We examine several scenarios for their origin in terms of newborn ZAMS stars and although most of these fail to explain the observations, we cannot exclude that these sources are young stars already on the ZAMS with modest residual accretion that quenches the expansion of the HII region. Finally, we consider the possibility that the IRAS sources are high-mass pre-ZAMS (or pre-H-burning) objects deriving most of the emitted luminosity from accretion.

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arXiv1998

IRAS 23385+6053: A Prototype Massive Class 0 Object

IRAS 23385+6053 is a Young Stellar Object with luminosity 16,000 solar luminosities at a kinematic distance of 4.9 kpc. This candidate precursor of an ultracompact HII region is associated with a millimeter source detected at the JCMT but is undetected at centimeter wavelengths with the VLA. We observed this source with the OVRO millimeter array at 3.4 mm in the continuum, HCO+(1-0), H13CO+(1-0) and SiO(v=0, 2-1) line emission, and with CAM aboard ISO at 6.75 and 15 um. The IRAS source is coincident with a 3.4 mm compact (r~0.048 pc) and massive (M~370 solar masses) core, which is undetected at 15 um to a 3 sigma level of 6 mJy; this is compatible with the derived H2 column density of 2x10(24) and the estimated visual extinction of about 2000 mag. We find L(submm)/L(bol)>10(-3) and M(env)/M(star)>>1, typical of Class 0 objects. The source is also associated with a compact outflow characterized by a size similar to the core radius, a dynamical timescale of about 7,000 years, and a mass loss rate of about 10(-3) solar masses/year. The axis of the outflow is oriented nearly perpendicular to the plane of the sky, ruling out the possibility that the non-detection at 15 um is the result of a geometric effect. All these properties suggest that IRAS 23385+6053 is the first example of a bona fide massive Class 0 object.

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arXiv1997

Star formation in disk galaxies driven by primordial H_2

We show that gaseous \HI disks of primordial composition irradiated by an external radiation field can develop a multiphase medium with temperatures between 10^2 and 10^4 K due to the formation of molecular hydrogen. For a given \HI column density there is a critical value of the radiation field below which only the cold \HI phase can exist. Due to a time decreasing quasar background, the gas starts cooling slowly after recombination until the lowest stable temperature in the warm phase is reached at a critical redshift $z=z_{cr}$. Below this redshift the formation of molecular hydrogen promotes a rapid transition towards the cold \HI phase. We find that disks of protogalaxies with $10^{20}\simlt N_{HI}\simlt 10^{21} cm^{-2}$ are gravitationally stable at $T\sim 10^4$ K and can start their star formation history only at $z \simlt z_{cr}\sim 2$, after the gas in the central portion of the disk has cooled to temperatures $T\simlt 300$ K. Such a delayed starbust phase in galaxies of low gas surface density and low dynamical mass can disrupt the disks and cause them to fade away. These objects could contribute significantly to the faint blue galaxy population.

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arXiv1997

How small were the first cosmological objects?

The minimum mass that a virialized gas cloud must have in order to be able to cool in a Hubble time is computed, using a detailed treatment of the chemistry of molecular hydrogen. With a simple model for halo profiles, we reduce the problem to that of numerically integrating a system of chemical equations. The results agree well with numerically expensive 3D simulations, and our approach has the advantage of rapidly being able to explore large regions of parameter space. The minimum baryonic mass M_b is found to be strongly redshift dependent, dropping from 10^6 solar masses at z=15 to 5000 solar masses at z=100 as molecular cooling becomes effective. For z>>100, M_b rises again, as CMB photons inhibit H_2-formation through the H^- channel. Finally, for z>>200, the H_2^+ channel for H_2-formation becomes effective, driving M_b down towards 10^3 solar masses. With a standard CDM power spectrum with sigma_8=0.7, this implies that a fraction 10^{-3} of all baryons may have formed luminous objects by z=30, which could be sufficient to reheat the universe.

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