Effects of Ohmic and ambipolar diffusion on the formation and evolution of the first core, protostar and circumstellar disc

Yusuke Tsukamoto, Kazunari Iwasaki, Satoshi Okuzumi, Masahiro N. Machida, Shu-ichiro Inutsuka

Published 2015-03-17Version 1

We investigate the formation and evolution of the first core, protostar, and circumstellar disc with a three-dimensional non-ideal (including both Ohmic and ambipolar diffusion) radiation magnetohydrodynamics simulation. We found that the magnetic flux is largely removed by magnetic diffusion in the first core phase and that the plasma $\beta$ of the centre of the first core becomes large, $\beta>10^4$. On the other hand, in an ideal simulation, $\beta\sim 10$ at the centre of the first core. Even though $\beta$ inside the first core thus differs significantly between the resistive and ideal model, the angular momentum of the first core does not. The simulations with magnetic diffusion show that the circumstellar disc forms at almost the same time of protostar formation even with a relatively strong initial magnetic field (the value for the initial mass-to-flux ratio of the cloud core relative to the critical value is $\mu=4$). The disc has a radius of $r \sim 1$ AU at the protostar formation epoch. We confirm that the disc is rotationally supported. We also show that the disc is massive ($Q\sim 1$) and that gravitational instability may play an important role in the subsequent disc evolution.