Axisymmetric gravitational collapse of rotating interstellar gas clouds

Numerical calculations have been made of the gravitational axisymmetric collapse of isothermal gas clouds endowed with angular momentum. The evolutionary study is based on the so-called Fluid-in-Cell method coupled to an efficient algebraic algorithm which allows the Poisson equation to be integrated by means of block tri-diagonal matrices. The results, at ages slight larger than the initial free-fall time, indicate that flattened disk-shaped structures are formed in the central region of the clouds-in good agreement with the previous analytical results predicted by the authors.