Related papers: Young stellar clusters and star formation througho…
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been instrumental in the discovery of large numbers of extragalactic young massive star clusters (YMCs), often assumed to be proto-globular clusters (GCs). As a consequence, the field of YMC formation…
In the present-day universe, it appears that most, and perhaps all, massive stars are born in star clusters. It also appears that all star clusters contain stars drawn from an approximately universal initial mass function, so that almost…
I assess the similarities and differences between the star-formation modes in quiescent spiral galaxies versus those in violent starburst regions. As opposed to the quiescent star-formation mode in spiral galaxies, current empirical…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are the most massive star clusters forming in nearby galaxies and are thought to be a young analogue to the globular clusters. Understanding the formation process of YMCs leads to looking into very efficient…
The young star clusters we observe today are the building blocks of a new generation of stars and planets in our Galaxy and beyond. Despite their fundamental role we still lack knowledge about the conditions under which star clusters form…
Star cluster formation is a major mode of star formation in the extreme conditions of interacting galaxies and violent starbursts. Young clusters are observed to form in a variety of such galaxies, a substantial number resembling the…
Young, massive star clusters are the most notable and significant end products of violent star-forming episodes triggered by galaxy collisions, mergers, and close encounters. Their contribution to the total luminosity induced by such…
Recent high-resolution observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) reveal that young star clusters of extraordinary luminosity and compactness ("super star clusters") are commonly found in starburst systems. Cluster formation appears…
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…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are dense aggregates of young stars, which are essential to galaxy evolution, owing to their ultraviolet radiation, stellar winds, and supernovae. The typical mass and radius of YMCs are M~10^4 M_sun and R~1…
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…
We review the formation and early evolution of the most massive and dense young stellar clusters, focusing on the role they can play in our understanding of star and planet formation as a whole. Young massive cluster (YMC) progenitor clouds…
Clusters are the dense inner regions of a wide-spread hierarchy of young stellar structures. They often reveal a continuation of this hierarchy inside of them, to smaller scales, when they are young, but orbital mixing eventually erases…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
Stellar clusters are born in cold and dusty molecular clouds and the youngest clusters are embedded to various degrees in dusty dark molecular material. Such embedded clusters can be considered protocluster systems. The most deeply buried…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
The formation of massive stars is an outstanding problem in stellar evolution. However, it is expected that they are (predominantly) born in heirarchical environments within massive young clusters, which in turn are located within larger…
How Very Young Massive star Clusters (VYMCs; also known as "starburst" clusters), which typically are of $\gtrsim 10^4M_\odot$ and are a few Myr old, form out of Giant Molecular Clouds is still largely an open question. Increasingly…
The formation of stellar clusters dictates the pace at which galaxies evolve, and solving the question of their formation will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of the Universe as a whole. While it is well known that star clusters…
Massive stars are key players in the evolution of galaxies, yet their formation pathway remains unclear. In this work, we use data from several galaxy-wide surveys to build an unbiased dataset of ~700 massive young stellar objects (MYSOs),…