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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2011
We developed a fast numerical scheme for solving ambipolar diffusion MHD equations with the strong coupling approximation, which can be written as the ideal MHD equations with an additional ambipolar diffusion term in the induction equation. The mass, momentum, magnetic fluxes due to the ideal MHD equations can be easily calculated by any Godunov-type schemes. Additional magnetic fluxes due to the ambipolar diffusion term are added in the magnetic fluxes, because of two same spatial gradients operated on the advection fluxes and the ambipolar diffusion term. In this way, we easily kept divergence-free magnetic fields using the constraint transport scheme. In order to overcome a small time step imposed by ambipolar diffusion, we used the super time stepping method. The resultant scheme is fast and robust enough to do the long term evolution of star formation simulations. We also proposed that the decay of alfen by ambipolar diffusion be a good test problem for our codes.