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

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the ZAMS, the accretion r<strong>at</strong>e is set to the previous non-zero value in order<br />

to get more realistic values for R∗I and R∗II. This allows us to avoid setting<br />

R∗ = RZAMS too early in the protostar’s evolution. If, however, the accretion<br />

slows after the sink has been in place for more than its KH time, we assume<br />

the star has reached its ZAMS radius, and we set Lacc = 0, R∗ = RZAMS,<br />

and L∗ = LZAMS. Note th<strong>at</strong> typical KH times, where tKH = GM 2 ∗ /R∗L∗,<br />

range from 1000 yr for a large and rapidly accreting 10 M⊙ protostar (see e.g.<br />

Hosokawa et al. 2010) to ∼ 4 × 10 4 yr for a 15 M⊙ main sequence star. <strong>The</strong><br />

typical KH luminosity for a 15 M⊙ star is LKH ∼ 5 × 10 4 L⊙ (see Fig. 3.1).<br />

Given our averaging scheme in which a minimum <strong>of</strong> one 0.015 M⊙ gas<br />

particle can be accreted over 100 years, this gives an effective minimum mea-<br />

surable accretion r<strong>at</strong>e <strong>of</strong> 1.5 × 10 −4 M⊙ yr −1 . However, for M∗ > ∼ 10 M⊙,<br />

this minimum accretion r<strong>at</strong>e still yields a value <strong>of</strong> R∗II th<strong>at</strong> is smaller than<br />

RZAMS. In this case, we again set the protostellar luminosity and radius to its<br />

ZAMS values once the accretion r<strong>at</strong>e has dropped to near-zero. In our case,<br />

the measured accretion r<strong>at</strong>e drops very quickly after 500 yr. At this point<br />

the star has reached 15 M⊙, is still undergoing adiab<strong>at</strong>ic expansion, and has<br />

tKH ∼ 1000 yr. <strong>The</strong> star then begins rapid KH contraction until the measured<br />

accretion r<strong>at</strong>e becomes zero <strong>at</strong> 1000 yr. Though within the simul<strong>at</strong>ion we set<br />

L∗ = LZAMS as soon as the averaged accretion r<strong>at</strong>e is zero, in reality the pro-<br />

tostar is better described <strong>by</strong> a more gradual approach to RZAMS. In Figure<br />

3.1 we show the protostellar values used in the simul<strong>at</strong>ion along with a more<br />

realistic ‘slow-contraction’ model which follows the same accretion history as<br />

the ‘with-feedback’ case until reaching an asymptotic growth r<strong>at</strong>e <strong>of</strong> 10 −3 M⊙<br />

yr −1 . <strong>The</strong> ‘slow-contraction’ model is then held <strong>at</strong> this r<strong>at</strong>e, which is similar<br />

to the fiducial value used in Equ<strong>at</strong>ion 11, and is also the typical accretion<br />

68

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