Radiation Driven Implosion of Molecular Cloud Cores

Abstract

We present the first three-dimensional calculations of Radiation Driven Implosion of Molecular Clouds including self-gravity and ionization. We discuss the effects of initial density perturbations on the dynamics of ionizing globules and show that the onset of gravitational collapse can be significantly delayed for a multiple of the implosion timescale. We demonstrate that Radiation Driven Implosion could be an efficient process for injecting disordered kinetic energy into molecular clouds in the vicinity of massive stars.