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Dissipation of Magnetic Fields in Very Dense Interstellar Clouds and the Magnetic Flux of a Newborn Star

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2017

Toyoharu Umebayashi
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606, Japan
Takenori Nakano
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606, Japan

Extract

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The magnetic flux to mass ratio of an interstellar cloud is 104 to 105 times the ratio in a typical magnetic star with a surface field of 1kG, and is at least several hundred times the ratio in most strongly magnetic stars. This excess magnetic flux must be lost in some stage of star formation. The dominant process of magnetic flux loss in ordinary clouds is the drift of charged particles and magnetic fields in the sea of neutral particles (plasma drift, also called ambipolar diffusion). However, even this process is inefficient in a cloud of hydrogen number density nH ≲ 1010 cm−3.

Type
I. Star Forming Processes in the Solar Neighborhood
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1987 

References

Nakano, T. & Umebayashi, T. 1986a. Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc., in press.Google Scholar
Nakano, T. & Umebayashi, T. 1986b. Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc., in press.Google Scholar