The effects of radiation feedback on early fragmentation and stellar multiplicity

Abstract

Forming stars emit a significant amount of radiation into their natal environment. While the importance of radiation feedback from high-mass stars is widely accepted, radiation has generally been ignored in simulations of low-mass star formation. I use ORION, an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) three-dimensional gravito-radiation-hydrodynamics code, to model low-mass star formation in a turbulent molecular cloud. I demonstrate that including radiation feedback has a profound effect on fragmentation and protostellar multiplicity. Although heating is mainly confined within the core envelope, it is sufficient to suppress disk fragmentation that would otherwise result in low-mass companions or brown dwarfs. As a consequence, turbulent fragmentation, not disk fragmentation, is likely the origin of low-mass binaries. © 2011 International Astronomical Union.