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| Paper: |
Episodic Accretion, Radiative Feedback, and Their Role in Low-mass Star Formation |
| Volume: |
451, 9th Pacific Rim Conference on Stellar Astrophysics |
| Page: |
213 |
| Authors: |
Stamatellos, D.; Hubber, D.; Hubber, A. |
| Abstract: |
It is speculated that the accretion of material onto young protostars is episodic.
We present a computational method to include the effects of episodic accretion in
radiation hydrodynamic simulations of star formation. We find that during accretion
events protostars are “switched on", heating and stabilising the discs around them.
However, these events typically last only a few hundred years, whereas the intervals
in between them may last for a few thousand years. During these intervals, the
protostars are effectively “switched off", allowing gravitational instabilities
to develop in their discs and induce fragmentation. Thus, episodic accretion promotes
disc fragmentation, enabling the formation of low-mass stars, brown dwarfs and
planetary-mass objects. The frequency and the duration of episodic accretion events
may be responsible for the low-mass end of the IMF, i.e. for more than 60% of all stars. |
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