Related papers: Star Formation in Molecular Clouds?
One of the most important and well-established empirical results in astronomy is the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation between the density of interstellar gas and the rate at which that gas forms stars. A tight correlation between these…
The star-forming ability of a molecular cloud depends on the fraction of gas it can cycle into the dense-phase. Consequently, one of the crucial questions in reconciling star-formation in clouds is to understand the factors that control…
During the last two decades, the focus of star formation research has shifted from understanding the collapse of a single dense core into a star to studying the formation hundreds to thousands of stars in molecular clouds. In this chapter,…
In this review, I present the case for how massive stars may form through stellar collisions. This mechanism requires very high stellar densities, up to 4 orders of magnitude higher than are observed in the cores of dense young clusters. In…
Star formation is inefficient. Recent advances in numerical simulations and theoretical models of molecular clouds show that the combined effects of interstellar turbulence, magnetic fields and stellar feedback can explain the low…
We investigate star formation at very early evolutionary phases in five massive clouds in the inner 500 pc of the Galaxy, the Central Molecular Zone. Using interferometer observations of H$_2$O masers and ultra-compact H II regions, we find…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
I review observational studies of the large-scale star formation process in nearby galaxies. A wealth of new multi-wavelength data provide an unprecedented view on the interplay of the interstellar medium and (young) stellar populations on…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…
This paper reviews the chemistry of star-forming regions, with an emphasis on the formation of high-mass stars. We first outline the basic molecular processes in dense clouds, their implementation in chemical models, and techniques to…
Observations suggest that star formation occurs in only one or two crossing times for a range of scales spanning a factor of 1000. These observations include (1) measurements of embedded cluster ages in comparison with the cloud core…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
In this chapter, we will cover how stars form from the stellar nurseries that are giant molecular clouds. We will first review the physical processes that compete to regulate star formation. We then review star formation in turbulent,…
Stars are forming in our galaxy at a rate of between 1 and 4 solar masses of stars per year. In contrast to elliptical galaxies, which are largely devoid of star formation, star formation is still going on in spiral galaxies because of…
We investigate the formation of star clusters in an unbound GMC, where the supporting kinetic energy is twice as large as the cloud's self-gravity. This cloud manages to form a series of star clusters and disperse, all within roughly 2…
The empirical laws of star formation suggest that galactic-scale gravity is involved, but they do not identify the actual triggering mechanisms for clusters in the final stages. Many other triggering processes satisfy the empirical laws…
The most recent observational evidence seems to indicate that giant molecular clouds are predominantly gravitationally unbound objects. In this paper we show that this is a natural consequence of a scenario in which cloud-cloud collisions…
All stars are born in molecular clouds, and most in giant molecular clouds (GMCs), which thus set the star formation activity of galaxies. We first review their observed properties, including measures of mass surface density, Sigma, and…
We review the progress that has been made in observing and analyzing molecular cloud structure in recent years. Structures are self-similar over a wide range of scales with similar power law indices independent of the star forming nature of…