Numerical Simulation of Star Formation by the Bow Shock of the Centaurus
  A Jet
  Recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the extragalactic radio
source Centaurus A (Cen A) display a young stellar population around the
southwest tip of the inner filament 8.5 kpc from the Cen A galactic center,
with ages in the range of 1-3 Myr. Crockett et al. (2012) argue that the
transverse bow shock of the Cen A jet triggered this star formation as it
impacted dense molecular cores of clouds in the filament. To test this
hypothesis, we perform three-dimensional numerical simulations of induced star
formation by the jet bow shock in the inner filament of Cen A, using a
positivity preserving WENO method to solve the equations of gas dynamics with
radiative cooling. We find that star clusters form inside a bow-shocked
molecular cloud when the maximum initial density of the cloud is > 40 H2
molecules/cm^3. In a typical molecular cloud of mass 10^6 M_sun and diameter
200 pc, approximately 20 star clusters of mass 10^4 M_sun are formed, matching
the HST images.
