Surface density profiles from the numerical model. Lines with circles from top to bottom: the molecular clump gas initially, the unprocessed gas and the stellar component at t = 1 Myr (see key). The molecular clump is the same as in Fig. 1, and the initial gas density index is p₀ = 1.7. The solid symbol-free line depicts a slope of −0.7 which is the slope expected for the initial surface density profile of the gas when p₀ = 1.7. We note that in the clump outskirts, the actual surface density profile becomes increasingly steeper than the power-law approximation.