Related papers: Primordial Mass Segregation in Starburst Stellar C…
It is believed that the majority of stars form in clusters. Therefore it is likely that the gas physical conditions that prevail in forming clusters, largely determine the properties of stars that form and in particular the initial mass…
As natural consequences of the accretion process, outflows are one of the few (indirect) tracers of accretion. We used CO(2-1) PdBI observations towards 6 MDCs in Cygnus-X, containing 9 high-mass cores, to investigate what the accretion…
Star formation generally proceeds inside-out, with overdense regions inside protostellar cores collapsing rapidly and progressively less dense regions following later. Consequently, a small protostar will form early in the evolution of a…
Dense gas in molecular clouds is an important signature of ongoing and future star formation. We identify and track dense cores in the STARFORGE simulations, following the core evolution from birth through dispersal by stellar feedback for…
We present a model for the formation of massive ($M > 10 M_\odot$) stars through accretion-induced collisions in the cores of embedded dense stellar clusters. This model circumvents the problem of accreting onto a star whose luminosity is…
We investigate numerically and semi-analytically the collapse of low-mass, rotating prestellar cores. Initially, the cores are in approximate equilibrium with low rotation (the initial ratio of thermal to gravitational energy is $\alpha_0…
We report ALMA Band 6 continuum observations of 2000 AU resolution toward four massive molecular clouds in the Central Molecular Zone of the Galaxy. To study gas fragmentation, we use the dendrogram method to identify cores as traced by the…
The mm-wave continuum sources (MCS) in Ophiuchus have mutual collision rates less than their collapse rates by a factor of 10 to 100, suggesting most will form stars without further interactions. However, this ratio of rates would have…
A fundamental issue in star formation is understanding the precise mechanisms leading to the formation of prestellar cores, and their subsequent gravitationally unstable evolution. To address this question, we carefully construct a suite of…
We present a detailed study of the collapse of molecular cloud cores using high resolution 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations. In this first in a series of investigations our initial conditions consists of spherical…
Recent observations and hydrodynamical simulations of star formation inside a giant molecular cloud have revealed that, within a star forming region, stars do not form evenly distributed throughout this region, but rather in small…
A fraction of the dense cores within a turbulent molecular cloud will eventually collapse to form stars. Identifying the physical criteria for instability and analyzing critical core properties is therefore necessary to star formation…
The distribution of protostar masses is studied for core-environment systems whose duration of infall follows a waiting-time distribution. Each core-environment system has a continuous density profile with no barrier to mass flow. The core…
In this contribution we review our recent numerical work discussing the essential role of the local cluster environment in assembling massive stars. First we show that massive stars are formed from low mass pre-stellar cores and become…
Mass segregation in star clusters is often thought to indicate the onset of energy equipartition, where the most massive stars impart kinetic energy to the lower-mass stars and brown dwarfs/free floating planets. The predicted net result of…
During star cluster formation, ongoing mass accretion is resisted by stellar feedback in the form of protostellar outflows from the low-mass stars and photo-ionization and radiation pressure feedback from the massive stars. We model the…
The first stars are known to form in primordial gas, either in minihalos with about $10^6$~M$_\odot$ or so-called atomic cooling halos of about $10^8$~M$_\odot$. Simulations have shown that gravitational collapse and disk formation in…
We present the results of a series of numerical simulations of compressible, self-gravitating hydrodynamic turbulence of cluster-forming clumps in molecular clouds. We examine the role that turbulence has in the formation of gravitationally…
The formation mechanism of massive stars remains one of the main open problems in astrophysics, in particular the relationship between the mass of the most massive stars, and that of the cores in which they form. Numerical simulations of…
Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass from the surrounding cloud material. Molecular cloud regions without turbulent driving sources, or where turbulence is driven…