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Copyright by Athena Ranice Stacy 2011 - The University of Texas at ...

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<strong>The</strong> size <strong>of</strong> the refinement levels had to be chosen carefully. <strong>The</strong> level<br />

<strong>of</strong> highest refinement must be large enough to encompass all the mass th<strong>at</strong><br />

will eventually become the first minihalo. If this level <strong>of</strong> highest refinement is<br />

too small, lower-resolution particles will drift into the center <strong>of</strong> the collapsing<br />

region and disrupt the collapse <strong>of</strong> the high-resolution particles. Furthermore,<br />

there will be some artificial density enhancement for lower-resolution particles<br />

th<strong>at</strong> are near the boundary <strong>of</strong> a higher-resolution region. This is because the<br />

particles <strong>of</strong> lower refinement levels have higher masses, and for a given density<br />

the corresponding smoothing length for lower-resolution particles should be<br />

larger than the smoothing length for higher-resolution particles. Smoothing<br />

lengths for particles <strong>of</strong> both resolutions will be very similar, however, if they are<br />

very close to each other. This causes low-resolution particles near a boundary<br />

to have artificially reduced smoothing lengths and overly enhanced densities.<br />

However, this will not pose a problem as long as the highest refinement level<br />

is large enough such th<strong>at</strong> the low-resolution particles are well outside <strong>of</strong> the<br />

collapsing region <strong>of</strong> interest.<br />

2.3.2 Sink particle cre<strong>at</strong>ion<br />

When the density <strong>of</strong> a gas particle becomes gre<strong>at</strong>er than nmax = 10 12 cm −3 ,<br />

this particle and the surrounding gas particles within a distance <strong>of</strong> less than<br />

the accretion radius racc are converted into a single sink particle. We set racc<br />

equal to the resolution length <strong>of</strong> the simul<strong>at</strong>ion, racc = Lres 50 AU, where:<br />

Lres 0.5<br />

1/3 Mres<br />

ρmax<br />

with ρmax nmaxmH. <strong>The</strong> sink particle’s initial mass is close to the simula-<br />

tion’s resolution mass, Mres 0.7 M⊙.<br />

17<br />

,

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