Speaker
Rowan Smith
(ZAH/ITA University of Heidelberg)
Description
Filaments are seen throughout the ISM, from long filamentary IRDCs to individual filamentary sites of star formation. Using the moving mesh code AREPO we can investigate filament formation on all scales, as the unique combination of a Lagrangian mesh with a Riemann solver results in an extremely accurate treatment of shocks and discontinuities. I will describe how filamentary molecular clouds are formed in spiral arms in a self-consistent galactic simulation with a cloud mass resolution of only 4 Msol. I will use this to show how the velocities imprinted on the gas at its formation influence the future evolution and star formation of the resulting clouds. I will classify the structure of filaments within a suite of simulations and show how the intrinsic 3D properties of the filaments relate to that which is observed in 2D column density projections. The 3D filaments have a steeper profile than those seen in projection, and often overlap to produce braiding in the projected filament.
Author
Rowan Smith
(ZAH/ITA University of Heidelberg)