Abstract
The formation of Giant Molecular clouds (GMCs) sets the stage for the formation of protostellar systems by the gravitational collapse of dense regions within the GMC that fragment into smaller core components that in turn condense into stars. Inherent in the difficulty in attaining this goal is that the gravitational collapse and ensuing fragmentation depend critically upon initial conditions in the cores as well as the maintenance of accuracy in the simulations as the cores collapse. One of the goals of this research is to understand the nature and physical properties of the formation of binay and multiple stellar systems with typical low mass stars ( ∼ 0.2 to 3 M[⊙]). We have developed a powerful numerical code that is addressing the key issues surrounding the formation of low mass stars. This technology consists of a parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) self-gravitational radiation-hydrodynamics code. This methodology allows us to obtain considerable computational efficiency over conventional codes when applied to problems involving gravitational collapse across many orders of magnitude in density and radius. In this brief paper, we discuss preliminary results of the formation of stars for the parameter space of marginally stable, turbulent molecular cloud cores as they evolve to protostars over a range of turbulence and rotational rate. We contrast our results with recent SPH results for similar initial conditions. We survey current SPH simulations and show where the lack of resolution in these simulations may begin to affect the outcome, possibly leading to false fragmentation and an inaccurate picture of the stellar mass distribution and clustering properties.
