Dynamical heating of Newborn Stars in dense cores
Numerical simulation performed with FLASH.
Description of the simulation:
Camacho, Ballesteros-Paredes, et al. (2025) study the kinematic evolution of newborn stars within star-forming dense molecular clouds using numerical magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The authors found that massive stars form within more massive and denser clumps, and in more crowded environments, compared to low-mass stars. This configuration allows massive stars to accrete more material and interact dynamically with other stars simultaneously. As they gain mass, their orbits tighten, resulting in an increased velocity dispersion. In contrast, low-mass stars tend to form in the periphery of such cores, where they are more spatially separated and embedded in lower-density regions. Consequently, their velocity dispersion remains lower, as they accrete less vigorously and remain relatively isolated. The authors refer to this mechanism as accretion-induced orbital tightening.