Related papers: Models for the Formation of Massive Stars
Supermassive stars born from pristine gas in atomically-cooled haloes are thought to be the progenitors of supermassive black holes at high redshifts. However, the way they accrete their mass is still an unsolved problem. In particular, for…
Models of planetary core growth by either planetesimal or pebble accretion are traditionally disconnected from the models of dust evolution and formation of the first gravitationally-bound planetesimals. The state-of-the-art models…
Observations suggest that star formation occurs in only one or two crossing times for a range of scales spanning a factor of 1000. These observations include (1) measurements of embedded cluster ages in comparison with the cloud core…
How do stars that are more massive than the Sun form, and thus how is the stellar initial mass function (IMF) established? Such intermediate- and high-mass stars may be born from relatively massive pre-stellar gas cores, which are more…
Galaxies accrete their mass by means of both smooth accretion from the cosmic web, and the mergers of smaller entities. We wish to quantify the respective role of these two modes of accretion, which could determine the morphological types…
Star formation is a fundamental process for galactic evolution. One issue over the last several decades has been determining whether star formation is induced by external triggers or is self-regulated in a closed system. The role of an…
The realization that most stars form in clusters, raises the question of whether star/planet formation are influenced by the cluster environment. The stellar density in the most prevalent clusters is the key factor here. Whether dominant…
The formation of massive stars is one of the major unsolved problems in stellar astrophysics. However, only few if any of these are found as single stars, on average massive stars have more than one companion. Many of them are born in dense…
Stars with masses of >~ 20 solar masses have short Kelvin times that enable them to reach the main sequence while still accreting from their natal clouds. The resulting nuclear burning produces a huge luminosity and a correspondingly large…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
In order to distinguish between the various components of massive star forming regions (i.e. infalling, outflowing and rotating gas structures) within our own Galaxy, we require high angular resolution observations which are sensitive to…
Star formation occurs in hierarchical patterns in both space and time. Galaxies form large regions on the scale of the interstellar Jeans length and these large regions apparently fragment into giant molecular clouds and cloud cores in a…
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…
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…
We review recent theoretical results on the formation of the first stars in the universe, and emphasize related open questions. In particular, we discuss the initial conditions for Population III star formation, as given by variants of the…
Stars and their corresponding protoplanetary disks form in diverse environments. To account for these natural variations, we investigate the formation process around nine solar mass stars with a maximum resolution of 2 AU in a Giant…
We investigate the radiation pressure feedback in the formation of massive stars in 1, 2, and 3D radiation hydrodynamics simulations of the collapse of massive pre-stellar cores. In contrast to previous research, we consider frequency…
A review on current observations of high-mass star formation is given, with a little bit of theoretical background. Particular emphasis is given to the, in my opinion, most important observations to put strong constraints on models of…
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…
The chemical abundances in the atmosphere of a star provide unique information about the gas from which that star formed, and, modulo processes that are not important for the vast majority of stars, such as mass transfer in close binary…