The role of turbulence, magnetic fields and feedback for star formation

Abstract

Star formation is inefficient. Only a few percent of the available gas in molecular clouds forms stars, leading to the observed low star formation rate (SFR). The same holds when averaged over many molecular clouds, such that the SFR of whole galaxies is again surprisingly low. Indeed, considering the low temperatures, molecular clouds should be highly gravitationally unstable and collapse on their global mean freefall timescale. And yet, they are observed to live about 10-100 times longer, i.e., the SFR per freefall time (SFRff) is only a few percent. Thus, other physical mechanisms must provide support against quick global collapse. Magnetic fields, turbulence and stellar feedback have been proposed as stabilising agents controlling star formation, but it is still unclear which of these processes is the most important and what their relative contributions are. Here I present high-resolution, adaptive- mesh-refinement simulations of star cluster formation that include turbulence, magnetic fields, and protostellar jet/outflow feedback. These simulations produce nearly realistic star formation rates consistent with observations, but only if turbulence, magnetic fields and feedback are included simultaneously. Show more