The Formation of Clusters of Stars and Brown Dwarfs

Matthew R. Bate

Over the past 3 years, I have been performing the world's most complex computer simulations of star formation. The first calculation was performed in collaboration with Ian Bonnell (University of St Andrews) and Volker Bromm (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and was press released in April 2002.

Four calculations have now been completed.

• Calculation 1: Original calculation: Mean thermal Jeans mass 1 solar mass, minimum object mass ~3 Jupiter masses.

• Calculation 2: Denser molecular cloud: Mean thermal Jeans mass 1/3 solar mass, minimum object mass ~3 Jupiter masses.

• Calculation 3: Low Metallicity cloud: Mean thermal Jeans mass 1 solar mass, minimum object mass ~9 Jupiter masses.

• Calculation 4: Cloud with different initial turbulent power spectrum: Mean thermal Jeans mass 1 solar mass, minimum object mass ~3 Jupiter masses, P(k)~k^{-6}.

These test the dependence of star formation on the initial conditions in molecular clouds. Images and animations of the calculations will be placed on this site as papers discussing the calculations are submitted for publication.

Currently, only animations and information on the first 2 calculations is available (but hints of things to come are provided by the images from calculations 3 and 4 below). Click on the images below for animations and detailed information.

Original Calculation		Original Calculation vs Denser Cloud		Denser Cloud
Original Calculation vs Low Metallicity Cloud				Denser Cloud vs Different Turbulent Power Spectrum
Low Metallicity Cloud		Low Metallicity Cloud vs Different Turbulent Power Spectrum		Different Turbulent Power Spectrum