Star formation, MHD turbulence, and high energy phenomena interlinks

• Grant number: 24/21854-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Astronomy - Astrophysics of the Interstellar Medium
• Principal Investigator: Diego Antonio Falceta Gonçalves
• Grantee: Pedro Henrique Barboza Rossetto
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/02120-0 - Investigation of high energy and plasma astrophysics phenomena, installation of the ASTRI-Mini Array & construction of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Small Size Telescopes (CTA-SSTs), AP.ESP

Abstract

Stars are known to be formed in dense regions within giant molecular clouds.External agents, like turbulence driven by shock waves, may provoke the formation of high-density, supersonic regions that may in turn collapse to form stars. Interstellar turbulence has been studied since the 1950s. For the years that followed, the view of a turbulence-dominated ISM became much clearer. ince reconnection changes the topology of the magnetic field, it leads to magnetic flux diffusion at a rate independent of the plasma microphysics (Eyink, A. Lazarian, and E. T. Vishniac 2011). We have explored the role of this turbulent reconnection diffusion (RD) on the transport of magnetic fields from the central, dense regions of turbulent, self-gravitating, molecular clouds by means of 3-D MHD simulations. We intend to continue the studies of the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds with forced turbulence, as well as the natural driving mechanisms of turbulence and star formation (SF) in such systems. From the 3D MHD simulations described above, we can obtain the distributions of density and magnetic fields in turbulent molecular clouds. For the treatment of the particles' diffusion, we will perform multidimensional Monte Carlo simulations of the propagation of CRs in the background system and obtain the byproducts (emission, electron-positron pairs, and neutrinos. (AU)