Implementing and comparing sink particles in AMR and SPH

Christoph Federrath*, Robi Banerjee, Daniel Seifried, Paul C. Clark, Ralf S. Klessen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We implemented sink particles in the Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) code FLASH to model the gravitational collapse and accretion in turbulent molecular clouds and cores. Sink particles are frequently used to measure properties of star formation in numerical simulations, such as the star formation rate and efficiency, and the mass distribution of stars. We show that only using a density threshold for sink particle creation is insufficient in case of supersonic flows, because the density can exceed the threshold in strong shocks that do not necessarily lead to local collapse. Additional physical collapse indicators have to be considered. We apply our AMR sink particle module to the formation of a star cluster, and compare it to a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code with sink particles. Our comparison shows encouraging agreement of gas and sink particle properties between the AMR and SPH code.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputational Star Formation
EditorsJoao Alves, Bruce G. Elmegreen, Josep M. Girart, Virginia Trimble, Virginia Trimble
Pages425-428
Number of pages4
EditionS270
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2011
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Astronomical Union
NumberS270
Volume6
ISSN (Print)1743-9213
ISSN (Electronic)1743-9221

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