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Shu-ichiro Inutsuka

Publications and source records attributed to Shu-ichiro Inutsuka.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Relative Alignments Between Magnetic Fields, Velocity Gradients, and Dust Emission Gradients in NGC 1333

Magnetic fields play an important role in shaping and regulating star formation in molecular clouds. Here, we present one of the first studies examining the relative orientations between magnetic ($B$) fields and the dust emission, gas column density, and velocity centroid gradients on the 0.02 pc (core) scales, using the BISTRO and VLA+GBT observations of the NGC 1333 star-forming clump. We quantified these relative orientations using the Project Rayleigh Statistic (PRS) and found preferential global parallel alignment between the $B$ field and dust emission gradients, consistent with large-scale studies with Planck. No preferential global alignments, however, are found between the $B$ field and velocity gradients. Local PRS calculated for subregions defined by either dust emission or velocity coherence further revealed that the $B$ field does not preferentially align with dust emission gradients in most emission-defined subregions, except in the warmest ones. The velocity-coherent structures, on the other hand, also showed no preferred $B$ field alignments with velocity gradients, except for one potentially bubble-compressed region. Interestingly, the velocity gradient magnitude in NGC 1333 ubiquitously features prominent ripple-like structures that are indicative of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves. Finally, we found $B$ field alignments with the emission gradients to correlate with dust temperature and anticorrelate with column density, velocity dispersion, and velocity gradient magnitude. The latter two anticorrelations suggest that alignments between gas structures and $B$ fields can be perturbed by physical processes that elevate velocity dispersion and velocity gradients, such as infall, accretions, and MHD waves.

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MHD Simulation in Galactic Center Region with Radiative Cooling and Heating

We investigate the role of magnetic field on the gas dynamics in a galactic bulge region by three dimensional simulations with radiative cooling and heating. While high-temperature corona with $T>10^6\ {\rm K}$ is formed in the halo regions, the temperature near the mid-plane is $\lesssim 10^4\ {\rm K}$ following the thermal equilibrium curve determined by the radiative cooling and heating. Although the thermal energy of the interstellar gas is lost by radiative cooling, the saturation level of the magnetic field strength does not significantly depend on the radiative cooling and heating. The magnetic field strength is amplified to $10\ {\rm μG}$ on average, and reaches several hundred ${\rm μG}$ locally. We find the formation of magnetically dominated regions at mid-latitudes in the case with the radiative cooling and heating, which is not seen in the case without radiative effect. The vertical thickness of the mid-latitude regions is $50-150\ {\rm pc}$ at the radial location of $0.4-0.8\ {\rm kpc}$ from the galactic center, which is comparable to the observed vertical distribution of neutral atomic gas. When we take the average of different components of energy density integrated over the galactic bulge region, the magnetic energy is comparable to the thermal energy. We conclude that the magnetic field plays a substantial role in controlling the dynamical and thermal properties of the galactic bulge region.

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Discovery of Asymmetric Spike-like Structures of the 10 au Disk around the Very Low-luminosity Protostar Embedded in the Taurus Dense Core MC 27/L1521F with ALMA

Recent Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations have revealed an increasing number of compact protostellar disks with radii of less than a few tens of astronomical units and that young Class 0/I objects have an intrinsic size diversity. To deepen our understanding of the origin of such tiny disks, we performed the highest-resolution configuration observations with ALMA at a beam size of $\sim$0$''$03 (4 au) on the very low-luminosity Class 0 protostar embedded in the Taurus dense core MC 27/L1521F. The 1.3 mm continuum measurement successfully resolved a tiny, faint ($\sim$1 mJy) disk with a major axis length of $\sim$10 au, one of the smallest examples in the ALMA protostellar studies. In addition, we detected spike-like components in the northeastern direction at the disk edge. Gravitational instability or other fragmentation mechanisms cannot explain the structures, given the central stellar mass of $\sim$0.2 $M_{\odot}$ and the disk mass of $\gtrsim$10$^{-4}$ $M_{\odot}$. Instead, we propose that these small spike structures were formed by a recent dynamic magnetic flux transport event due to interchange instability that would be favorable to occur if the parental core has a strong magnetic field. The presence of complex arc-like structures on a larger ($\sim$2000 au) scale in the same direction as the spike structures suggests that the event was not single. Such episodic, dynamical events may play an important role in maintaining the compact nature of the protostellar disk in the complex gas envelope during the main accretion phase.

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Filamentary Network and Magnetic Field Structures Revealed with BISTRO in the High-Mass Star-Forming Region NGC2264 : Global Properties and Local Magnetogravitational Configurations

We report 850 $μ$m continuum polarization observations toward the filamentary high-mass star-forming region NGC 2264, taken as part of the B-fields In STar forming Regions Observations (BISTRO) large program on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). These data reveal a well-structured non-uniform magnetic field in the NGC 2264C and 2264D regions with a prevailing orientation around 30 deg from north to east. Field strengths estimates and a virial analysis for the major clumps indicate that NGC 2264C is globally dominated by gravity while in 2264D magnetic, gravitational, and kinetic energies are roughly balanced. We present an analysis scheme that utilizes the locally resolved magnetic field structures, together with the locally measured gravitational vector field and the extracted filamentary network. From this, we infer statistical trends showing that this network consists of two main groups of filaments oriented approximately perpendicular to one another. Additionally, gravity shows one dominating converging direction that is roughly perpendicular to one of the filament orientations, which is suggestive of mass accretion along this direction. Beyond these statistical trends, we identify two types of filaments. The type-I filament is perpendicular to the magnetic field with local gravity transitioning from parallel to perpendicular to the magnetic field from the outside to the filament ridge. The type-II filament is parallel to the magnetic field and local gravity. We interpret these two types of filaments as originating from the competition between radial collapsing, driven by filament self-gravity, and the longitudinal collapsing, driven by the region's global gravity.

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Evolution of the Angular Momentum of Molecular Cloud Cores in Magnetized Molecular Filaments

The angular momentum of molecular cloud cores plays a key role in the star formation process. However, the evolution of the angular momentum of molecular cloud cores formed in magnetized molecular filaments is still unclear. In this paper, we perform three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations to reveal the effect of the magnetic field on the evolution of the angular momentum of molecular cloud cores formed through filament fragmentation. As a result, we find that the angular momentum decreases by 30% and 50% at the mass scale of 1Msun in the case of weak and strong magnetic field, respectively. By analyzing the torques exerted on fluid elements, we identify the magnetic tension as the dominant process for angular momentum transfer for mass scales < 3Msun for the strong magnetic field case. This critical mass scale can be understood semi-analytically as the timescale of magnetic braking. We show that the anisotropy of the angular momentum transfer due to the presence of strong magnetic field changes the resultant angular momentum of the core only by a factor of two. We also find that the distribution of the angle between the rotation axis and the magnetic field does not show strong alignment even just before the first core formation. Our results also indicate that the variety of the angular momentum of the cores are inherited from the difference of the phase of the initial turbulent velocity field. The variety could contribute to the diversity in size and other properties of protoplanetary disks recently reported by observations.

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The History of The Milky Way: The Evolution of Star Formation, Cosmic Rays, Metallicity, and Stellar Dynamics over Cosmic Time

We study the long-term evolution of the Milky Way (MW) over cosmic time by modeling the star formation, cosmic rays, metallicity, stellar dynamics, outflows and inflows of the galactic system to obtain various insights into the galactic evolution. The mass accretion is modeled by the results of cosmological N-body simulations for the cold dark matter. We find that the star formation rate is about half the mass accretion rate of the disk, given the consistency between observed Galactic Diffuse X-ray Emissions (GDXEs) and possible conditions driving the Galactic wind. Our model simultaneously reproduces the quantities of star formation rate, cosmic rays, metals, and the rotation curve of the current MW. The most important predictions of the model are that there is an unidentified accretion flow with a possible number density of $\sim10^{-2}$ cm$^{-3}$ and the part of the GDXEs originates from a hot, diffuse plasma which is formed by consuming about 10 % of supernova explosion energy. The latter is the science case for future X-ray missions; XRISM, Athena, and so on. We also discuss further implications of our results for the planet formation and observations of externalgalaxies in terms of the multimessenger astronomy.

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Growth of Massive Molecular Cloud Filament by Accretion Flows I: Slow Shock Instability v.s. Ambipolar Diffusion

The Herschel Gould Belt Survey showed that stars form in dense filaments in nearby molecular clouds. Recent studies suggest that massive filaments are bound by the slow shocks caused by accretion flows onto the filaments. The slow shock is known to be unstable to the corrugation deformation of the shock front. The corrugation instability could convert the accretion flow's ram pressure into turbulent pressure that influences the width of the filament, which, according to theory, determines the self-gravitational fragmentation scale and core mass. In spite of its importance, the effect of slow shock instability on star-forming filaments has not been investigated. In addition, the linear dispersion relation obtained from the ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) analysis shows that the most unstable wavelength of shock corrugation is infinitesimally small (or mean free path). In the scale of dense filaments, the effect of ambipolar diffusion can suppress the instability at small scales. This study investigates the influence of ambipolar diffusion on the instability of the slow shock. We perform two-dimensional MHD simulations to examine the linear growth of the slow shock instability, considering the effect of ambipolar diffusion. The results demonstrate that the most unstable scale of slow shock instability is approximately five times the length scale of ambipolar diffusion l_AD calculated using post-shock variables, where, l_AD corresponds to the scale where the magnetic Reynolds number for ambipolar diffusivity is unity.

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An improved dynamical Poisson equation solver for self-gravity

Since self-gravity is crucial in the structure formation of the universe, many hydrodynamics simulations with the effect of self-gravity have been conducted. The multigrid method is widely used as a solver for the Poisson equation of the self-gravity; however, the parallelization efficiency of the multigrid method becomes worse when we use a massively parallel computer, and it becomes inefficient with more than $10^4$ cores, even for highly tuned codes. To perform large-scale parallel simulations ($> 10^4$ cores), developing a new gravity solver with good parallelization efficiency is beneficial. In this article, we develop a new self-gravity solver using the telegraph equation with a damping coefficient, $κ$. Parallelization is much easier than the case of the elliptic Poisson equation since the telegraph equation is a hyperbolic partial differential equation. We analyze convergence tests of our telegraph equations solver and determine that the best non-dimensional damping coefficient of the telegraph equations is $\tildeκ \simeq 2.5$. We also show that our method can maintain high parallelization efficiency even for massively parallel computations due to the hyperbolic nature of the telegraphic equation by weak-scaling tests. If the time step of the calculation is determined by heating/cooling or chemical reactions, rather than the CFL condition, our method may provide the method for calculating self-gravity faster than other previously known methods such as the fast Fourier transform and multigrid iteration solvers because gravitational phase velocity determined by the CFL condition using these timescales is much larger than the fluid velocity plus sound speed.

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Giant Impact Events for Protoplanets: Energetics of Atmospheric Erosion by Head-on Collision

Numerous exoplanets with masses ranging from Earth to Neptune and radii larger than Earth have been found through observations. These planets possess atmospheres that range in mass fractions from 1% to 30%, reflecting the diversity of atmospheric mass fractions. Such diversities are supposed to be caused by differences in the formation processes or evolution. Here we consider head-on giant impacts onto planets causing atmosphere losses in the later stage of their formation. We perform smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations to study the impact-induced atmosphere loss of young super-Earths with 10%-30% initial atmospheric mass fractions. We find that the kinetic energy of the escaping atmosphere is almost proportional to the sum of the kinetic impact energy and self-gravitational energy released from the merged core. We derive the relationship between the kinetic impact energy and the escaping atmosphere mass. The giant impact events for planets of comparable masses are required in the final stage of the popular scenario of rocky planet formation. We show it results in a significant loss of the atmosphere, if the impact is a head-on collision with comparable masses. This latter fact provides a constraint on the formation scenario of rocky planets with substantial atmospheres.

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On Secular Gravitational Instability in Vertically Stratified Disks

Secular gravitational instability (GI) is one promising mechanism for explaining planetesimal formation. The previous studies on secular GI utilized a razor-thin disk model and derived the growth condition in terms of the vertically integrated physical values such as dust-to-gas surface density ratio. However, in weakly turbulent disks where secular GI can operate, a dust disk can be orders of magnitude thinner than a gas disk, and analyses treating the vertical structures are necessary to clarify the interplay of the midplane dust motion and the upper gas motion. In this work, we perform vertically global linear analyses of secular GI with the vertical domain size of a few gas scale heights. We find that dust grains accumulate radially around the midplane while gas circulates over the whole vertical region. We obtain well-converged growth rates when the outer gas boundary is above two gas scale heights. The growth rates are underestimated if we assume the upper gas to be steady and regard it just as the source of external pressure to the dusty lower layer. Therefore, treating the upper gas motion is important even when the dust disk is much thinner than the gas disk. Conducting a parameter survey, we represent the growth condition in terms of the Toomre's $Q$ value for dust and dust-to-gas surface density ratio. The critical dust disk mass for secular GI is $\sim10^{-4}$ stellar mass for the dust-to-gas surface density ratio of 0.01, the Stokes number of 0.1, and the radial dust diffusivity of $10^{-4}c_{\mathrm{s}} H$, where $c_{\mathrm{s}}$ is the gas sound speed and $H$ is the gas scale height.

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Co-evolution of dust grains and protoplanetary disks

We propose a new evolutionary process of protoplanetary disks "co-evolution of dust grains and protoplanetary disks", revealed by dust-gas two-fluid non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics simulations considering the growth of dust and associated changes in magnetic resistivity. We found that the dust growth significantly affects disk evolution by changing the coupling between the gas and magnetic field. Moreover, once the dust grains sufficiently grow and the adsorption of charged particles on dust grains becomes negligible, the physical quantities (e.g., density and magnetic field) of the disk are well described by characteristic power laws. In this disk structure, the radial profile of density is steeper and the disk mass is smaller than those of the model ignoring dust growth. We analytically derive these power laws from the basic equations of non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics. The analytical power laws are determined only by observable physical quantities, e.g., central stellar mass and mass accretion rate, and do not include difficult-to-determine parameters e.g., viscous parameter $α$. Therefore, our model is observationally testable and this disk structure is expected to provide a new perspective for future studies on protostar and disk evolution.

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Triple spiral arms of a triple protostar system imaged in molecular lines

Most stars form in multiple star systems. For a better understanding of their formation processes, it is important to resolve the individual protostellar components and the surrounding envelope and disk material at the earliest possible formation epoch because the formation history can be lost in a few orbital timescales. Here we present the ALMA observational results of a young multiple protostellar system, IRAS 04239+2436, where three well-developed large spiral arms were detected in the shocked SO emission. Along the most conspicuous arm, the accretion streamer was also detected in the SO$_2$ emission. The observational results are complemented by numerical magneto-hydrodynamic simulations, where those large arms only appear in magnetically weakened clouds. The numerical simulations also suggest that the large triple spiral arms are the result of gravitational interactions between compact triple protostars and the turbulent infalling envelope.

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Efficient radial migration by giant molecular clouds in the first several hundred Myr after the stellar birth

Stars in the Galactic disc, including the Solar system, have deviated from their birth orbits and have experienced radial mixing and vertical heating. By performing hydrodynamical simulations of a galactic disc, we investigate how much tracer particles, which are initially located in the disc to mimic newborn stars and the thin and thick disc stars, are displaced from initial near-circular orbits by gravitational interactions with giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To exclude the influence of other perturbers that can change the stellar orbits, such as spiral arms and the bar, we use an axisymmetric form for the entire galactic potential. First, we investigate the time evolution of the radial and vertical velocity dispersion $σ_R$ and $σ_z$ by comparing them with a power law relation of $σ\propto t^β$. Although the exponents $β$ decrease with time, they keep large values of 0.3 $\sim$ 0.6 for 1 Gyr, indicating fast and efficient disc heating. Next, we find that the efficient stellar scattering by GMCs also causes a change in angular momentum for each star and, therefore, radial migration. This effect is more pronounced in newborn stars than old disc stars; nearly 30 per cent of stars initially located on the galactic mid-plane move more than 1 kpc in the radial direction for 1 Gyr. The dynamical heating and radial migration drastically occur in the first several hundred Myr. As the amplitude of the vertical oscillation increases, the time spent in the galactic plane, where most GMCs are distributed, decreases, and the rate of an increase in the heating and migration slows down.

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The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Studying the Complex Magnetic Field of L43

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 $μ$m from the L43 molecular cloud which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense ($N_{\rm H_2}\sim 10^{22}$-10$^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$) complex molecular cloud with a submillimetre-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to $\sim$160$\pm$30 $μ$G in the main starless core and up to $\sim$90$\pm$40 $μ$G in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and sub-critical values respectively and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfvénic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores.

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First BISTRO observations of the dark cloud Taurus L1495A-B10: the role of the magnetic field in the earliest stages of low-mass star formation

We present BISTRO Survey 850 μm dust emission polarisation observations of the L1495A-B10 region of the Taurus molecular cloud, taken at the JCMT. We observe a roughly triangular network of dense filaments. We detect 9 of the dense starless cores embedded within these filaments in polarisation, finding that the plane-of-sky orientation of the core-scale magnetic field lies roughly perpendicular to the filaments in almost all cases. We also find that the large-scale magnetic field orientation measured by Planck is not correlated with any of the core or filament structures, except in the case of the lowest-density core. We propose a scenario for early prestellar evolution that is both an extension to, and consistent with, previous models, introducing an additional evolutionary transitional stage between field-dominated and matter-dominated evolution, observed here for the first time. In this scenario, the cloud collapses first to a sheet-like structure. Uniquely, we appear to be seeing this sheet almost face-on. The sheet fragments into filaments, which in turn form cores. However, the material must reach a certain critical density before the evolution changes from being field-dominated to being matter-dominated. We measure the sheet surface density and the magnetic field strength at that transition for the first time and show consistency with an analytical prediction that had previously gone untested for over 50 years (Mestel 1965).

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An origin of narrow extended structure in the interstellar medium: an interstellar contrail created by a fast-moving massive object

We investigate the thermal condensation caused by a massive object that passes through the interstellar medium with high velocity, and propose a mechanism for creating a filamentary gaseous object, or interstellar contrail. Our main result shows that a long interstellar contrail can form with a certain parameter; a compact object more massive than $10^4\ {\rm M_\odot}$ can make a filament whose length is larger than $100\ {\rm pc}$. Observation of interstellar contrails may provide information on the number, masses, and velocities of fast-moving massive objects, and can be a new method for probing invisible gravitating sources such as intermediate-mass black holes.

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JCMT BISTRO Observations: Magnetic Field Morphology of Bubbles Associated with NGC 6334

We study the HII regions associated with the NGC 6334 molecular cloud observed in the sub-millimeter and taken as part of the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) Survey. In particular, we investigate the polarization patterns and magnetic field morphologies associated with these HII regions. Through polarization pattern and pressure calculation analyses, several of these bubbles indicate that the gas and magnetic field lines have been pushed away from the bubble, toward an almost tangential (to the bubble) magnetic field morphology. In the densest part of NGC 6334, where the magnetic field morphology is similar to an hourglass, the polarization observations do not exhibit observable impact from HII regions. We detect two nested radial polarization patterns in a bubble to the south of NGC 6334 that correspond to the previously observed bipolar structure in this bubble. Finally, using the results of this study, we present steps (incorporating computer vision; circular Hough Transform) that can be used in future studies to identify bubbles that have physically impacted magnetic field lines.

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The JCMT BISTRO Survey: A Spiral Magnetic Field in a Hub-filament Structure, Monoceros R2

We present and analyze observations of polarized dust emission at 850 $μ$m towards the central 1 pc $\times$ 1 pc hub-filament structure of Monoceros R2 (Mon R2). The data are obtained with SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part of the BISTRO (B-fields in Star-forming Region Observations) survey. The orientations of the magnetic field follow the spiral structure of Mon R2, which are well-described by an axisymmetric magnetic field model. We estimate the turbulent component of the magnetic field using the angle difference between our observations and the best-fit model of the underlying large-scale mean magnetic field. This estimate is used to calculate the magnetic field strength using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, for which we also obtain the distribution of volume density and velocity dispersion using a column density map derived from $Herschel$ data and the C$^{18}$O ($J$ = 3-2) data taken with HARP on the JCMT, respectively. We make maps of magnetic field strengths and mass-to-flux ratios, finding that magnetic field strengths vary from 0.02 to 3.64 mG with a mean value of 1.0 $\pm$ 0.06 mG, and the mean critical mass-to-flux ratio is 0.47 $\pm$ 0.02. Additionally, the mean Alfvén Mach number is 0.35 $\pm$ 0.01. This suggests that in Mon R2, magnetic fields provide resistance against large-scale gravitational collapse, and magnetic pressure exceeds turbulent pressure. We also investigate the properties of each filament in Mon R2. Most of the filaments are aligned along the magnetic field direction and are magnetically sub-critical.

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