Related papers: Star Formation Thresholds
It is suggested that the thermal physics of star-forming clouds may play a more important role than has usually been recognized in the origin of the stellar IMF and in determining a characteristic mass scale. The importance of the thermal…
The canonical theory for planet formation in circumstellar disks proposes that planets are grown from initially much smaller seeds. The long-considered alternative theory proposes that giant protoplanets can be formed directly from…
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…
The formation of a star is a dynamic process fed by the gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud core. Theoretical models and observations suggest that the majority of this infalling material settles into a protoplanetary disk before…
The star formation history of galaxies is a complex process usually considered to be stochastic in nature, for which we can only give average descriptions such as the color-density relation. In this work we follow star-forming gas particles…
The observed star formation rate of the Milky Way can be explained by applying a metallicity-dependent factor to convert CO luminosity to molecular gas mass and a star formation efficiency per free-fall time that depends on the virial…
Dust particles sediment toward the midplanes of protoplanetary disks, forming dust-rich sublayers encased in gas. What densities must the particle sublayer attain before it can fragment by self-gravity? We describe various candidate…
Gravitational instabilities play an important role in structure formation of gas-rich high-redshift disc galaxies. In this paper, we revisit the axisymmetric perturbation theory and the resulting growth of structure by taking the realistic…
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…
The star formation rate in galaxies should be related to the fraction of gas that can attain densities large enough for gravitational collapse. In galaxies with a turbulent interstellar medium, this fraction is controlled by the effective…
Properties of normal galactic star formation, including the density dependence, threshold density, turbulent scaling relations, and clustering properties, are applied to the formation of galactic bulges. One important difference is that the…
We review the current theory of how galaxies form within the cosmological framework provided by the cold dark matter paradigm for structure formation. Beginning with the pre-galactic evolution of baryonic material we describe the analytical…
We investigate the formation and early evolution of star clusters assuming that they form from a turbulent starless clump of given mass bounded inside a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a particular mass surface…
In the light of the discovery of numerous (almost) dark galaxies from the ALFALAFA and LITTLE THINGS surveys, we revisit the predictions of Jimenez et al. 1997, based on the Toomre stability of rapidly-spinning gas disks. We have updated…
At $z=1-3$, the formation of new stars is dominated by dusty galaxies whose far-IR emission indicates they contain colder dust than local galaxies of a similar luminosity. We explore the reasons for the evolving IR emission of similar…
Stars generally form in aggregates, some of which are bound ('clusters') while others are unbound and disperse on short ($\sim10$ Myr) timescales ('associations'). The fraction of stars forming in bound clusters ($\Gamma$) is a fundamental…
Galactic scaling relations between the (surface densities of) the gas mass and the star formation (SF) rate are known to develop substantial scatter or even change form when considered below a certain spatial scale. We quantify how this…
Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. For several decades it has been thought that stellar birth is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity and magnetostatic support,…
Galaxy interactions/mergers, gravitational instabilities and density waves, such as bars, are frequently invoked to trigger starbursts. These mechanisms have been explored through numerical simulations, with the help of various star…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…