Numerical study on star formation process induced by collisions between filamentary molecular clouds
speaker: Raiga Kashiwagi
Abstract:
Recent observations have revealed that filamentary molecular clouds are closely related to star formation. In particular, where the filaments appear to overlap, active star formation has been observed. One possible interpretation is that the filaments collide with each other and then star formation is triggered. Therefore, we focus on collisions between filamentary molecular clouds and investigate these evolutionary processes by using 2D hydrodynamical simulations. We assumed a head-on collision of isothermal filaments in hydrostatic equilibrium. One of the main results is that the critical line mass, which governs the radial gravitational instability of the filament, also governs the radial gravitational instability of the shocked region, which is formed by the collision. In other words, if the total line mass of the initial filaments exceeds the critical line mass, we can expect that filament-filament collisions trigger a radial gravitational collapse of the shocked region. On the other hand, when the total line mass is less than the critical line mass, the equilibrium filament will be formed in the shocked region. In this presentation, I will report not only the results of the hydrodynamic calculation but also the magnetohydrodynamic calculation and discuss the properties of the magnetic field in filament-filament collisions.