Keto, Eric and Burkert, Andreas. 2014. "From filaments to oscillating starless cores." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 441:1468-1473. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu379
Long-wavelength sonic oscillations are observed or inferred in many of the small, dark molecular clouds, the starless cores, that are the precursors to protostars. The oscillations provide significant internal energy and the time-scale for their dissipation may control the rate of star formation in starless cores. Despite their importance, their origin is unknown. We explore one hypothesis that the oscillations develop as a starless core forms from a filament. We model this process with a numerical hydrodynamic simulation and generate synthetic molecular line observations with a radiative transfer simulation. Comparison with actual observations shows general agreement suggesting that the proposed mechanism is viable.
