Massive stars produce so much light that the radiation pressure they exert on the gas and dust around them is stronger than their gravitational attraction, a condition that has long been expected to prevent them from growing by accretion. We present three-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of a massive prestellar core and find that radiation pressure does not halt accretion. Instead, gravitational and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities channel gas onto the star system through nonaxisymmetric disks and filaments that self-shield against radiation while allowing radiation to escape through optically thin bubbles. Gravitational instabilities cause the disk to fragment and form a massive companion to the primary star. Radiation pressure does not limit stellar masses, but the instabilities that allow accretion to continue lead to small multiple systems.

We report the results of a series of AMR radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of massive star forming clouds using the ORION code. These simulations are the first to include the feedback effects protostellar outflows, as well as protostellar radiative heating and radiation pressure exerted on the infalling, dusty gas. We find that outflows evacuate polar cavities of reduced optical depth through the ambient core. These enhance the radiative flux in the poleward direction so that it is 1.7 to 15 times larger than that in the midplane. As a result the radiative heating and outward radiation force exerted on the protostellar disk and infalling cloud gas in the equatorial direction are greatly diminished. This simultaneously reduces the Eddington radiation pressure barrier to high-mass star formation and increases the minimum threshold surface density for radiative heating to suppress fragmentation compared to models that do not include outflows. The strength of both these effects depends on the initial core surface density. Lower surface density cores have longer free-fall times and thus massive stars formed within them undergo more Kelvin contraction as the core collapses, leading to more powerful outflows. Furthermore, in lower surface density clouds the ratio of the time required for the outflow to break out of the core to the core free-fall time is smaller, so that these clouds are consequently influenced by outflows at earlier stages of collapse. As a result, outflow effects are strongest in low surface density cores and weakest in high surface density one. We also find that radiation focusing in the direction of outflow cavities is sufficient to prevent the formation of radiation pressure-supported circumstellar gas bubbles, in contrast to models which neglect protostellar outflow feedback.

We present a set of 3-dimensional, radiation-magnetohydrodynamic calculations of the gravitational collapse of massive (300 M ), star-forming molecular cloud cores. We show that the combined effects of magnetic fields and radiative feedback strongly suppress core fragmentation, leading to the production of single star systems rather than small clusters. We find that the two processes are efficient at suppressing fragmentation in different regimes, with the feedback most effective in the dense, central region and the magnetic field most effective in more diffuse, outer regions. Thus, the combination of the two is much more effective at suppressing fragmentation than either one considered in isolation. Our work suggests that typical massive cores, which have mass-to-flux ratios of about 2 relative to critical, likely form a single star system, but that cores with weaker fields may form a small star cluster. This result helps us understand why the observed relationship between the core mass function and the stellar initial mass function holds even for ∼ 100M cores with many thermal Jeans masses of material. We also demonstrate that a ∼ 40 AU Keplerian disk is able to form in our simulations, despite the braking effect caused by the strong magnetic field.

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