Related papers: Star Formation in Disks: Spiral Arms, Turbulence, …
The origin and types of spiral arms are reviewed with an emphasis on the connections between these arms and star formation. Flocculent spiral arms are most likely the result of transient instabilities in the gas that promote dense cloud…
Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…
Star formation is triggered in essentially three ways: (1) the pressures from existing stars collect and squeeze nearby dense gas into gravitationally unstable configurations, (2) random compression from supersonic turbulence makes new…
The empirical laws of star formation suggest that galactic-scale gravity is involved, but they do not identify the actual triggering mechanisms for clusters in the final stages. Many other triggering processes satisfy the empirical laws…
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…
(ABBREVIATED) Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. In this review the relation between interstellar turbulence and star formation is discussed. Supersonic turbulence can provide support…
Star formation by gravitational instabilities, sequential triggering, and turbulence triggering are briefly reviewed in order to compare the various mechanisms that are observed in main galaxy disks with those in the inner kiloparsec…
Star complexes are the largest globular regions of star formation in galaxies. If there is a spiral density wave, nuclear ring, tidal arm, or other well-defined stellar structure, then gravitational instabilities in the gaseous component…
Processes that promote the formation of dense cold clouds in the interstellar media of galaxies are reviewed. Those that involve background stellar mass include two-fluid instabilities, spiral density wave shocking, and bar accretion. Young…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
Gas processes affecting star formation are reviewed with an emphasis on gravitational and magnetic instabilities as a source of turbulence. Gravitational instabilities are pervasive in a multi-phase medium, even for sub-threshold column…
The organization of the interstellar medium in disk galaxies obeys the large scale dynamics set by kpc-size structures. Improving our knowledge of how the dense, molecular gas is distributed in a disk is an important step in our…
Understanding the star formation process 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, modulated by…
We discuss star formation in the turbulent interstellar medium. We argue that morphological appearance and dynamical evolution of the gas is primarily determined by supersonic turbulence, and that stars form via a process we call…
Young galaxies are clumpy, gas-rich, and highly turbulent. Star formation appears to occur by gravitational instabilities in galactic disks. The high dispersion makes the clumps massive and the disks thick. The star formation rate should be…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…
Stars and star clusters 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…
The role of disk instabilities, such as bars and spiral arms, and the associated resonances, in growing bulges in the inner regions of disk galaxies have long been studied in the low-redshift nearby Universe. There it has long been probed…
The causes of spiral structure in galaxies remain uncertain. Leaving aside the grand bisymmetric spirals with their own well-known complications, here we consider the possibility that multi-armed spiral features originate from density…
Fragmentation of a spiral arm is thought to drive the formation of giant clumps in galaxies. Using linear perturbation analysis for self-gravitating spiral arms, we derive an instability parameter and define the conditions for clump…