Talk Details

Monday, November 6, 2006 - 3:15pm

Dr. Robi Banerjee (ZAH/ITA):

"Modeling Star Formation with Adaptive Mesh Refinement Techniques"

Abstract. The advances of computers and modern numerical methods allow unprecedented detailed studies of the formation of stars which are the results of collapsing cores within molecular clouds. In particular, grid based codes build on adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) techniques can resolve molecular cloud cores down to the protostellar environment (which spans 7 or more oders of magnitude in length scale). In this talk, I will present the results of our 3D AMR collapse simulations (done with the FLASH code) which include radiative processes from molecular line emissions and dust radiation as well as magnetic fields. In particular, we confirmed that magnetic fields coupled to the protodisk can expell gas and drive outflows and jets; angular momentum is efficiently transported by spiral arms and magnetic fields; massive stars assemble very rapidly from the collapse of high mass turbulent cloud cores due to very high accretion rates.