Related papers: Cold Dark Clouds: The Initial Conditions for Star …
Dark matter (DM) in protostellar halos can dramatically alter the current theoretical framework for the formation of the first stars. Heat from supersymmetric DM annihilation can overwhelm any cooling mechanism, consequently impeding the…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
The winds and radiation from massive stars clear out large cavities in the interstellar medium. These bubbles, as they have been called, impact their surrounding molecular clouds and may influence the formation of stars therein. Here we…
We consider the dynamical evolution of an interstellar cloud that is initially in thermal equilibrium in the warm phase and is then subjected to a sudden increase in the pressure of its surroundings. We find that if the initial plasma beta…
Shocks may have been prevalent in the early Universe, associated with virialization and supernova explosions, etc. Here, we study thermal evolution and fragmentation of shock-compressed clouds, by using a one-zone model with detailed…
In many clusters of galaxies there is evidence for cooling flows which deposit large quantities of cool gas in the central regions. A fraction of this gas might accumulate as dense cool clouds. The aim of this communication is to discuss…
We are living in a dusty universe: dust is ubiquitously seen in a wide variety of astrophysical environments, ranging from circumstellar envelopes around cool red giants to supernova ejecta, from diffuse and dense interstellar clouds and…
Star formation in high-redshift dwarf galaxies is a key to understand early galaxy evolution in the early Universe. Using the three-dimensional hydrodynamics code GIZMO, we study the formation mechanism of cold, high-density gas clouds in…
Cool, evolved stars are the main source of chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium (ISM), and understanding their mass loss and structure offers a unique opportunity to study the cycle of matter in the Universe. Pulsation,…
To characterize the initial conditions for intermediate- to high-mass star formation, we observed two Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) that remain absorption features up to 70mum wavelength, with the PdBI in the 3.23mm dust continuum as well as…
The first galaxies contain stars born out of gas with little or no metals. The lack of metals is expected to inhibit efficient gas cooling and star formation but this effect has yet to be observed in galaxies with oxygen abundance relative…
We perform a set of cosmological simulations of early structure formation with incorporating baryonic streaming motions. We present a case where a significantly elongated gas cloud with $\sim\!10^4\,$solar masses (${\rm M_\odot}$) is formed…
In this contribution we review our recent numerical work discussing the essential role of the local cluster environment in assembling massive stars. First we show that massive stars are formed from low mass pre-stellar cores and become…
Starless cores represent the initial stage of evolution toward (proto)star formation, and a subset of them, known as prestellar cores, with high density (~ 10^6 cm^-3 or higher) and being centrally concentrated are expected to be embryos of…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
Clusters of galaxies are self-gravitating systems of mass ~10^14-10^15 Msun. They consist of dark matter (~80 %), hot diffuse intracluster plasma (< 20 %) and a small fraction of stars, dust, and cold gas, mostly locked in galaxies. In most…
We summarize the current status of the turbulent model of star formation in turbulent molecular clouds. In this model, clouds, clumps and cores form a hierarchy of nested density fluctuations caused by the turbulence, and either collapse or…
We investigate the formation of protostellar clusters during the collapse of dense molecular cloud cores with a focus on the evolution of potential and kinetic energy, the degree of substructure, and the early phase of mass segregation. Our…
Star formation within the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) may be intimately linked to the orbital dynamics of the gas. Recent models suggest that star formation within the dust ridge molecular clouds (from G0.253+0.016 to Sgr B2) follows an…