Growth of Perturbations in Gravitational Collapse and Accretion
Growth of Perturbations in Gravitational Collapse and Accretion
When a self-gravitating spherical gas cloud collapses or accretes onto a central mass, the inner region of the cloud develops a density profile ρ ∝ r-3/2 and the velocity approaches free fall. We show that in this region nonspherical perturbations grow with decreasing radius. In the linear regime, the tangential …