Related papers: The Formation of Distributed and Clustered Stars i…
Magnetic stresses collimate protostellar winds into a common distribution of force with angle. Sweeping into the ambient medium, such winds drive bipolar molecular outflows whose properties are insensitive to the distribution of ambient gas…
Stellar clusters form by gravitational collapse of turbulent molecular clouds, with up to several thousand stars per cluster. They are thought to be the birthplace of most stars and therefore play an important role in our understanding of…
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 Taurus molecular cloud complex is the paradigm for quiescent, low-density, isolated star formation. Yet the age distribution of its stellar population indicates that star formation is a rapid and dynamic process, inconsistent with the…
The study of star cluster evolution necessitates modeling how their density profiles develop from their natal gas distribution. Observational evidence indicates that many star clusters follow a Plummer-like density profile. However, most…
Star formation in our Galaxy occurs in molecular clouds that are self-gravitating, highly turbulent, and magnetized. We study the conditions under which cloud cores inherit large-scale magnetic field morphologies and how the field is…
Super-sonic turbulence fragments molecular clouds (MC) into a very complex density field with density contrasts of several orders of magnitude. A fraction of the gas is locked into dense and gravitationally bound cores, which collapse as…
How starburst clusters form out of molecular clouds is still an open question. In this article, I highlight some of the key constraints in this regard, that one can get from the dynamical evolutionary properties of dense stellar systems. I…
Major progress has been made over the last few years in understanding hydrodynamical processes on cosmological scales, in particular how galaxies get their baryons. There is increasing recognition that a large part of the baryons accrete…
Cloud environment is thought to play a critical role in determining the mechanism of formation of massive stars. In this contribution we review the physical characteristics of the environment around recently formed massive stars. Particular…
We examine the conditions under which binary and multiple stars may form out of turbulent molecular cloud cores using high resolution 3-D, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamics (Truelove et al., 1997, 1998; Klein, 1999). We argue…
We propose a simple theoretical model for star formation in which the local star formation rate in a galaxy is determined by three factors. First, the interplay between the interstellar radiation field and molecular self-shielding…
Recently, we have shown that if the ISM is governed by super-sonic turbulent flows, the excursion-set formalism can be used to calculate the statistics of self-gravitating objects over a wide range of scales. On the largest self-gravitating…
All molecular clouds are observed to be turbulent, but the origin, means of sustenance, and evolution of the turbulence remain debated. One possibility is that stellar feedback injects enough energy into the cloud to drive observed motions…
We discuss the nature of the velocity dispersion vs. size relation for molecular clouds. In particular, we add to previous observational results showing that the velocity dispersions in molecular clouds and cores are not purely functions of…
We include feedback in global hydrodynamic simulations in order to study the star formation properties, and gas structure and dynamics, in models of galactic disks. We extend previous models by implementing feedback in gravitationally bound…
In the first part of this article, we review observations of the mass and luminosity functions of young and old star cluster systems. We also review some of the physical processes that may determine the characteristic mass of globular…
Most, perhaps all, stars go through a phase of vigorous outflow during formation. We examine, through 3D MHD simulation, the effects of protostellar outflows on cluster formation. We find that the initial turbulence in the cluster-forming…
Star formation in galaxies is inefficient, and understanding how star formation is regulated in galaxies is one of the most fundamental challenges of contemporary astrophysics. Radiative cooling, feedback from supernovae and active galactic…
Newborn stars form within the localized, high density regions of molecular clouds. The sequence and rate at which stars form in dense clumps and the dependence on local and global environments are key factors in developing descriptions of…