Radiation-driven implosion of molecular cloud cores

Abstract

We present the first three-dimensional calculations of radiation-driven implosion of molecular clouds, including self-gravity and ionization. We discuss the effects of initial density perturbations on the dynamics of ionizing globules, and show that the onset of gravitational collapse can be significantly delayed for a multiple of the implosion time-scale. We demonstrate that radiation-driven implosion could be an efficient process for injecting disordered kinetic energy into molecular clouds in the vicinity of massive stars.