Related papers: Monolithic or hierarchical star formation? A new s…
The cloud-scale physics of star formation and feedback represent the main uncertainty in galaxy formation studies. Progress is hampered by the limited empirical constraints outside the restricted environment of the Local Group. In…
We describe how star formation is expected to proceed in the early metal-free Universe, focusing on the very first generations of stars. We then discuss how the star formation process may change as the effects of metallicity, external…
We review current understanding of star formation, outlining an overall theoretical framework and the observations that motivate it. A conception of star formation has emerged in which turbulence plays a dual role, both creating…
Recent observations have revealed massive galactic molecular outflows that may have physical conditions (high gas densities) required to form stars. Indeed, several recent models predict that such massive galactic outflows may ignite star…
Our understanding of massive star evolution is in flux, due to recent upheavals in our view of mass loss, and observations of a high binary fraction among O-type stars. Mass-loss rates for standard metallicity-dependent winds of hot stars…
The search for the first stars formed from metal-free gas in the universe is one of the key issues in astronomy because it relates to many fields, such as the formation of stars and galaxies, the evolution of the universe, and the origin of…
The inner few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way harbours gas densities, pressures, velocity dispersions, an interstellar radiation field and a cosmic ray ionisation rate orders of magnitude higher than the disc; akin to the environment found…
The tight relation of star formation with molecular gas indicated by observations and assumed in recent models implies that the efficiency with which galaxies convert their gas into stars depends on gas metallicity. This is because the…
With recent advances in modelling stars using high-precision asteroseismology, the systematic effects associated with our assumptions of stellar helium abundance ($Y$) and the mixing-length theory parameter ($\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$) are…
Recent hydrodynamical simulations of the late stages of supernova remnant (SNR) evolution have revealed that as they merge with the ambient medium, SNRs implode, leading to the formation of dense clouds in their center. While being highly…
Observations show that star formation in galaxies is closely correlated with the abundance of molecular hydrogen. Modeling this empirical relation from first principles proves challenging, however, and many questions regarding its…
We examine the growth of the stellar content of galaxies from z=3-0 in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations incorporating parameterised galactic outflows. Without outflows, galaxies overproduce stellar masses (M*) and star formation rates…
Cosmological numerical simulations of galaxy evolution show that accretion of metal-poor gas from the cosmic web drives the star formation in galaxy disks. Unfortunately, the observational support for this theoretical prediction is still…
We construct three extreme different scenarios of the star formation histories applicable to a sample of dwarf galaxies, based either on their present metallicity or their luminosity. The three possible scenarios imply different mechanical…
The lack of observations of abundance patterns originating in pair-instability supernovae has been a long-standing problem in relation to the first stars. This class of supernovae is expected to have an abundance pattern with a strong…
The spatial-kinematic structure of 48 young star clusters and associations is investigated. Moran's $I$ statistic is used to quantify the degree of kinematic substructure in each region, and the results are compared to those expected…
Stars in galaxies form in giant molecular clouds that coalesce when the atomic hydrogen is converted into molecules. There are currently two dominant models for what property of the galactic disk determines its molecular fraction: either…
We use simple analytic reasoning to identify physical processes that drive the evolution of the cosmic star formation density in cold dark matter universes. Based on our analysis, we formulate a model to characterise the redshift dependence…
We present our recent work on the conditions under which star formation occurs in a metal-poor environment, the Large Magellanic Cloud ([Fe/H] ~ -0.4). Water masers are used as beacons of the current star formation in HII regions. Comparing…
The existence of a mass-metallicity (MZ) relation in star forming galaxies at all redshift has been recently established. We aim at studying some possible physical mechanisms contributing to the MZ relation by adopting analytical solutions…