[70.06] Structure formation via the self-gravity interfacial instability

AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 70 Interstellar Medium
Oral, Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 2:00-3:30pm, Regency VII

[Previous] | [Session 70] | [Next]

[70.06] Structure formation via the self-gravity interfacial instability

R.M. Hueckstaedt (Applied physics division, Los Alamos National Laboratory), J.H. Hunter (University of Florida), A.H. Peterson (LANL, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)

Interfacial instabilities (such as Rayleigh-Taylor or Kelvin-Helmholtz) are believed to play significant roles in shaping molecular clouds and giving rise to star forming regions. Recent studies (Hunter, Whitaker,and Lovelace ApJ 482, 1997; Hueckstaedt and Hunter MNRAS 327, 2001) have shown that self-gravity causes crenulations along a density interface to grow as the system seeks a lower energy state. The self-gravity interfacial instability (SGI) persists for wavelengths less that the Jean's length and has a timescale on the order of the freefall time. We discuss the SGI and its application toward molecular cloud morphology.

The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: rmhx@lanl.gov

[Previous] | [Session 70] | [Next]