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Structure and Dynamics of Magnetized Dark Molecular Clouds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

P. S. Li
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA email: [email protected]
C. F. McKee
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA email: [email protected] Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
R. I. Klein
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA email: [email protected] Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-23, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
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Massive infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are believed to be the precursors to star clusters and massive stars (e.g. Bergin & Tafalla 2007). The supersonic, turbulent nature of molecular clouds in the presence of magnetic fields poses a great challenge in understanding the structure and dynamics of magnetized molecular clouds and the star formation therein. Using the high-order radiation-magneto-hydrodynamic adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code ORION2 (Li et al. 2012), we perform a large-scale driven-turbulence simulation to reveal the 3D filamentary structure and dynamical state of a highly supersonic (thermal Mach number = 10) and strongly magnetized (plasma β=0.02) massive infrared dark molecular cloud. With the high resolution afforded by AMR, we follow the dynamical evolution of the cloud in order to understand the roles of strong magnetic fields, turbulence, and self-gravity in shaping the cloud and in the formation of dense cores.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2015 

References

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