Paul C. Clark, Simon C. O. Glover
We present the results of a numerical study designed to address the question of whether there is a column density threshold for star formation within molecular clouds. We have simulated a large number of different clouds, with volume and column densities spanning a wide range of different values, using a state-of-the-art model for the coupled chemical, thermal and dynamical evolution of the gas. We show that for low-mass clouds, around 1000 solar masses and below, star formation is only possible if the mean cloud column density exceeds 10^21 cm^-2. In more massive clouds, the required mean column density is a factor of a few lower. We demonstrate that this behaviour is well-described by a simple Jeans mass argument: clouds must contain multiple Jeans masses in order to form stars, and hence star-forming clouds cannot have arbitrarily low column densities. We have also examined the question of whether there is a column density threshold for the regions within clouds where star formation occurs. We show that there is a good correlation between the mass of gas above a K-band extinction A_K = 0.8 and the star formation rate (SFR), in agreement with recent observational work. Previously, this relationship has been explained in terms of a correlation between the SFR and the mass in dense gas. However, we find that in our simulations, this correlation is weaker and more time-dependent than that between the SFR and the column density. We argue that this points to dust shielding as the key process: the true correlation is one between the SFR and the mass in cold, well-shielded gas, and the latter correlates better with the column density than the volume density.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.5714
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