Related papers: Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
The formation of protostars and their disks has been understood as the result of the gravitational collapse phase of an accumulation of dense gas that determines the mass reservoir of the star-disk system. Against this background, the…
Recent simulations and observations suggest that star clusters form via the assembling of smaller sub-clusters. Because of their short relaxation time, sub-clusters experience core collapse much earlier than virialized solo-clusters, which…
Star formation is one of the least understood processes in cosmic evolution. It is difficult to formulate a general theory for star formation in part because of the wide range of physical processes involved. The interstellar gas out of…
Galactic star formation scaling relations show increased scatter from kpc to sub-kpc scales. Investigating this scatter may hold important clues to how the star formation process evolves in time and space. Here, we combine different…
Binary stars produce an array of dramatic astrophysical phenomena. They allow us to probe stellar structure, nuclear physics, and gravitational wave physics. They also produce the powerful supernovae that allow us to measure the scale of…
We investigate the ab-initio formation of super-massive stars in a pristine atomic cooling halo. The halo is extracted from a larger self-consistent parent simulation. The halo remains metal-free and star formation is suppressed due to a…
Understanding how and why star formation turns off in massive galaxies is a major challenge for studies of galaxy evolution. Many theoretical explanations have been proposed, but a definitive consensus is yet to be reached.
The last decade has witnessed significant advances in our observational understanding of the earliest stages of low-mass star formation. The advent of sensitive receivers on large radio telescopes such as the JCMT and IRAM 30m MRT has led…
In this contribution I present a review of star formation in clusters. I begin by discussing the various definitions of what constitutes a star cluster, and then compare the outcome of star formation (IMF, multiplicity, mass segregation and…
Massive stars (M $\gsim 10$ \msun) form from collapse of parsec-scale molecular clumps. How molecular clumps fragment to give rise to massive stars in a cluster with a distribution of masses is unclear. We search for cold cores that may…
This lecture reviews the fundamental physical processes involved in star formation in galaxy interactions and mergers. Interactions and mergers often drive intense starbursts, but the link between interstellar gas physics, large scale…
It has been known for more than 30 years that star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is slow, in the sense that only ~1% of the gas forms stars every free-fall time. This result is entirely independent of any particular model of…
Observations of both star-forming regions and young, gas-free stellar associations indicate that most nearby molecular clouds form stars only over a short time span before dispersal; large-scale flows in the diffuse interstellar medium have…
Theory predicts and observations confirm that low-mass stars (like the Sun) in their early life grow by accreting gas from the surrounding material. But for stars ~ 10 times more massive than the Sun (~10 M_sun), the powerful stellar…
Forming massive stars launch outflows of magnetic origin, which in fact serve as a marker for finding sites of massive star formation. However, both the theoretical and observational study of the mechanisms that intervene in the formation…
Rotation plays a key role in the star-formation process, from pre-stellar cores to pre-main-sequence (PMS) objects. Understanding the formation of massive stars requires taking into account the accretion of angular momentum during their PMS…
We describe observations in the nearby universe (<100 Mpc) with a 10-m or larger space-based telescope having imaging and spectral capabilities in the range 912-9000 \AA that would enable advances in the fields of massive stars, young…
This review covers hot cores in the context of high-mass star formation. After giving an overview of chemical processes and diversity during high-mass star formation, it reviews the `warm envelope' phase which probably precedes the…
Stars generally form faster than the ambipolar diffusion time, suggesting that several processes short circuit the delay and promote a rapid collapse. These processes are considered here, including turbulence compression in the outer parts…