Outline of Final Research Achievements |
Observations have shown that prestellar cores have strong magnetic fields. In previous studies, researchers have investigated the evolution of molecular cloud cores when the gravitational energy dominates the magnetic energy. However, there exists prestellar cores having magnetic energy larger than gravitational energy. In this study, the evolution of the cloud having a very strong magnetic field was investigated using three dimensional MHD simulations. In such clouds, after the magnetic field is removed by ambipolar diffusion, the cloud collapse occurs to form a protostar. However, since a significant fraction of the angular momentum is removed by the magnetic braking before the cloud collapse begins, the star formation process in very strongly magnetized clouds is considerably different from the normal process.
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