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The Role Of Nonideal Magnetohydrodynamic Effects, Gravitational Instability, And Episodic Accretion In Star-Formation, Indrani Das

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation focuses on the effect of magnetic fields on disk and core evolution during star-formation. We investigate the fragmentation scales of gravitational instability of a rotationally-supported self-gravitating protostellar disk using linear perturbation analysis in the presence of two nonideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effects: Ohmic dissipation and ambipolar diffusion. Our results show that molecular clouds exhibit a preferred lengthscale for collapse that depends on mass-to-flux ratio, magnetic diffusivities, and the Toomre-Q parameter. In addition, the influence of the magnetic field on the preferred mass for collapse leads to a modified threshold for the fragmentation mass, as opposed to a Jeans mass, …