event
Thursday 28 Jan 2010: Cosmic Magnetism and the Formation and Evolution of Interstellar Clouds and Protostellar Cores
Dr Matthew Kunz - University of Oxford, UK
Physics, 4th Floor interaction area 15:30-16:30
Magnetic fields play a crucial role not only in the formation of stars, but also in the formation and early evolution of their birthplaces, the interstellar clouds. In this talk, I will review recent advances in our understanding of cosmic magnetism and its influence on scales from kiloparsecs all the way down to AUs. These include: (i) the formation of interstellar clouds via the Parker instability in the presence of phase transitions from a warm to a cold HI interstellar medium; (ii) the determination of the initial core mass function by ambipolar-diffusion--initiated fragmentation in molecular clouds; and (iii) the formation and evolution of cores in magnetically-supported, self-gravitating molecular clouds, accounting for the effects of ambipolar diffusion and Ohmic dissipation, grain chemistry and dynamics, and radiative transfer. Contact will be made with both prior and ongoing observations, as well as previous theoretical work where appropriate.
