Core Collapse and the Formation of Binaries

Abstract

We examine the effect of an initial turbulent velocity field on the line-of-sight properties of cloud cores, their collapse and their fragmentation into multiple stellar systems. The multiplicity m depends strongly on the adopted initial turbulent Mach number M: m ≈ 1 + M, however with a large spread as a result of different choices of the random initial velocity field. The random initial superposition of modes also leads to a large spread in specific angular momenta of the cores which might explain the large period spread in observed binary systems.