Protostellar collapse of magneto-turbulent cloud cores: shape during collapse and outflow formation

Understand

We investigate protostellar collapse of molecular cloud cores by numerical simulations, taking into account turbulence and magnetic fields.

• By using the adaptive mesh refinement technique, the collapse is followed over a wide dynamic range from the scale of a turbulent cloud core to that of the first core.
• The cloud core is lumpy in the low density region owing to the turbulence, while it has a smooth density distribution in the dense region produced by the collapse.
• The shape of the dense region depends mainly on the mass of the cloud core; a massive cloud core tends to be prolate while a less massive cloud core tends to be oblate.