On the nature of star-forming filaments: II. Sub-filaments and velocities

Abstract

We show that hydrodynamic turbulent cloud simulations naturally produce large filaments made up of a network of smaller and coherent sub-filaments. Such simulations resemble observations of filaments and fibres in nearby molecular clouds. The sub-filaments are dynamical features formed at the stagnation points of the turbulent velocity field where shocks dissipate the turbulent energy. They are a ubiquitous feature of the simulated clouds, which appear from the beginning of the simulation and are not formed by gradual fragmentation of larger filaments. Most of the sub-filaments are gravitationally sub-critical and do not fragment into cores, however, there is also a significant fraction of supercritical sub-filaments which break up into star-forming cores. The sub-filaments are coherent along their length, and the residual velocities along their spine show that they are subsonically contracting without any ordered rotation on scales of ~0.1 pc. Accretion flows along the sub-filaments can feed material into star forming cores embedded within the network. The overall mass in sub-filaments and the number of sub-filaments increases as the cloud evolves. We propose that the formation of filaments and sub-filaments is a natural consequence of the turbulent cascade in the complex multi-phase interstellar medium. Sub-filaments are formed by the high wavenumber, small scale modes in the turbulent velocity field. These are then stretched by local shear motions and gathered together by a combination of low wavenumber modes and gravitational contraction on larger scales, and by doing so build up the extended filaments observed in column density maps.