An Unstable Truth: How Massive Stars get their Mass
11 Jul 2016
•
Rosen Anna L.
•
Krumholz Mark R.
•
McKee Christopher F.
•
Klein Richard I.
The pressure exerted by massive stars' radiation fields is an important
mechanism regulating their formation. Detailed simulation of massive star
formation therefore requires an accurate treatment of radiation...However, all
published simulations have either used a diffusion approximation of limited
validity; have only been able to simulate a single star fixed in space, thereby
suppressing potentially-important instabilities; or did not provide adequate
resolution at locations where instabilities may develop. To remedy this we have
developed a new, highly accurate radiation algorithm that properly treats the
absorption of the direct radiation field from stars and the re-emission and
processing by interstellar dust. We use our new tool to perform
three-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of massive
pre-stellar cores with laminar and turbulent initial conditions and properly
resolve regions where we expect instabilities to grow. We find that mass is
channeled to the stellar system via gravitational and Rayleigh-Taylor (RT)
instabilities, in agreement with previous results using stars capable of
moving, but in disagreement with methods where the star is held fixed or with
simulations that do not adequately resolve the development of RT instabilities. For laminar initial conditions, proper treatment of the direct radiation field
produces later onset of instability, but does not suppress it entirely provided
the edges of radiation-dominated bubbles are adequately resolved. Instabilities
arise immediately for turbulent pre-stellar cores because the initial
turbulence seeds the instabilities. Our results suggest that RT features are
significant and should be present around accreting massive stars throughout
their formation.(read more)