"Prestellar Core Formation in Turbulent Molecular Clouds"

Molecular clouds are the sites of all star formation, and recent work has led to major advances in understanding the dynamical processes involved. A key aspect of this is the role played by turbulence. Because clouds are so cold (~ 10 K), shocks produce very strong compressions in which the timescale for gravitational collapse is
short compared to that on larger scales in the cloud. In addition, the Jeans length and mass scales for gravitational instability are vastly reduced in post-shock stagnant regions. Rapid, transient ambipolar diffusion in shocks also significantly lowers the magnetic barrier to collapse. Current observations have unveiled the structure and kinematics of nearby star-forming clouds in increasingly fine detail, and numerical fluid dynamics simulations provide a means to interpret these observations physically. I will describe recent
progress in understanding the development of filamentary structure and the origin and properties of prestellar cores in turbulent clouds, discuss how the spectrum of prestellar cores relates to the distribution of stellar masses, and explain how our contemporary
picture of star formation connects to classical theories.

http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~eco/