On the Density Distribution in Star-forming Interstellar Clouds

Abstract

We use deep adaptive mesh refinement simulations of isothermal self-gravitating supersonic turbulence to study the imprints of gravity on the mass density distribution in molecular clouds. The simulations show that the density distribution in self-gravitating clouds develops an extended power-law tail at high densities on top of the usual lognormal. We associate the origin of the tail with self-similar collapse solutions and predict the power index values in the range from -7/4 to -3/2 that agree with both simulations and observations of star-forming molecular clouds.