Effect of radiative cooling on collapsing charged grains

Abstract

The effect of the radiative cooling of electrons on the gravitational collapse of cold dust grains with fluctuating electric charge is investigated. We find that the radiative cooling as well as the charge fluctuations, both, enhance the growth rate of the Jeans instability. However, the Jeans length, which is zero for cold grains and non-radiative plasma, becomes finite in the presence of radiative cooling of electrons and is further enhanced due to charge fluctuations of grains resulting in an increased threshold of the spatial scale for the Jeans instability.