Related papers: Large-Scale Gravitational Instability and Star For…
Local gravitational instability (LGI) is considered crucial for regulating star formation and gas turbulence in galaxy discs, especially at high redshift. Instability criteria usually assume infinitesimally thin discs or rely on…
The properties of young star clusters formed within a galaxy are thought to vary in different interstellar medium (ISM) conditions, but the details of this mapping from galactic to cluster scales are poorly understood due to the large…
Conditions for the fragmentation of expanding shells due to gravitational instability are discussed. The self-similar analytical solution is compared with the results of 3-dimensional computer simulations for the expansion into homogeneous…
We present a large suite of MHD simulations of turbulent, star-forming giant molecular clouds(GMCs) with stellar feedback, extending previous work by simulating 10 different random realizations for each point in the parameter space of cloud…
The distribution of size as a function of age observed for star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is very puzzling: young clusters are all compact, while the oldest systems show both small and large sizes. It is commonly…
We investigate the formation of planetesimals via the gravitational instability of solids that have settled to the midplane of a circumstellar disk. Vertical shear between the gas and a subdisk of solids induces turbulent mixing which…
We studied the stellar population and star clusters around six regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in order to understand the correlation between star formation and cluster formation episodes. We used the stellar data base of OGLE…
The current generation of millimeter interferometers have revealed a population of compact (r <~ 0.1 pc), massive (M ~ 100 Msun) gas cores that are the likely progenitors of massive stars. I review models for the evolution of these objects…
We present the first results of a project aimed at following the formation and long-term dynamical evolution of star clusters within the potential of a host galaxy. Here we focus on a model evolved within a simplified potential representing…
We perform a novel test of General Relativity by measuring the gravitational constant in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC contains six well-studied Cepheid variable stars in detached eclipsing binaries. Radial velocity and…
In this paper, we calculate simulated scattered light images of a circumstellar disk in which a planet is forming by gravitational instability. The simulated images bear no correlation to the vertically integrated surface density of the…
It is difficult to imagine a planet formation model that does not at some stage include a gravitationally unstable disc. Initially unstable gas-dust discs may form planets directly, but the high surface density required has motivated the…
Recent observations have found that the age distribution of star clusters (SCs) in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) shows a sharp peak around 2 Gyr ago. However, it is theoretically unclear what physical processes are responsible for such…
Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…
The average age difference between pairs of star clusters in the Large Magellanic Clouds increases with their separation as the ~0.35 power. This suggests that star formation is hierarchical in space and time. Small regions form stars…
We present an analysis of the spatial distribution of various stellar populations within the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. We use optically selected stellar samples with mean ages between ~9 and ~1000 Myr, and existing stellar cluster…
Molecular gas disks are generally Toomre stable ($Q_T>$1) and yet clearly gravitationally unstable to structure formation as evidenced by the existence of molecular clouds and ongoing star formation. This paper adopts a 3D perspective to…
The early stages of star formation are closely related to the ambient conditions in the interstellar medium. Important questions such as dust abundance, size distribution, temperature distribution, fraction of molecular gas, fraction of…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
We present preliminary numerical evidence that the physical conditions in high-mass star forming regions can arise from global gravitational infall, with the velocity dispersions being caused primarily by infall motions rather than random…