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Cooling behind mildly supersonic shocks in molecular clouds

Whitworth, Anthony Peter ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1178-5486 and Clarke, C. J. 1997. Cooling behind mildly supersonic shocks in molecular clouds. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 291 (3) , pp. 578-584. 10.1093/mnras/291.3.578

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Abstract

Collisions between stable, thermally supported gas clumps produce shock-compressed layers. However, these layers then undergo gravitational fragmentation only if the gas cools — on a dynamical time-scale or faster — to below its pre-shock temperature. Here we present an approximate analytic treatment of post-shock cooling which demonstrates that, under the conditions prevailing in molecular clouds, where the typical collision speeds are ~ 1 km s−1, cooling by dust is likely to be the dominant cooling mechanism, and is sufficiently fast to satisfy this requirement. Cooling by CO appears to be of secondary importance.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Physics and Astronomy
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISSN: 0035-8711
Last Modified: 28 Oct 2022 09:03
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/73095

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