Related papers: Star Formation Timescales and the Schmidt Law
We review recent observations of molecular gas in nearby galaxies and their implications for the star formation law on large (>1 kpc) scales. High-resolution data provided by millimetre interferometers are now adding to the basic…
Measurements of H-alpha, HI, and CO distributions in 61 normal spiral galaxies are combined with published far-infrared and CO observations of 36 infrared-selected starburst galaxies, in order to study the form of the global star formation…
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…
Empirical star formation laws from the last 20 years are reviewed with a comparison to simulations. The current form in main galaxy disks has a linear relationship between the star formation rate per unit area and the molecular cloud mass…
We present a general star formation law where star formation rate depends upon efficiency $\alpha$, timescale $\tau$ of star formation, gas component $\sigma_{g}$ of surface mass density and a real exponent $n$. A given exponent $n$…
We measure empirical relationships between the local star formation rate (SFR) and properties of the star-forming molecular gas on 1.5 kpc scales across 80 nearby galaxies. These relationships, commonly referred to as "star formation laws,"…
Star formation laws are empirical relations between the cold gas (HI+H$_2$) content of a galaxy and its star formation rate (SFR), being crucial for any model of galaxy formation and evolution. A well known example of such laws is the…
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…
We have combined Halpha and recent high resolution CO(J=1-0) data to consider the quantitative relation between gas mass and star formation rate, or the so-called Schmidt law in nearby spiral galaxies at regions of high molecular density.…
We present a new observational method to evaluate the star formation law as formulated by Schmidt: the power-law expression assumed to relate the rate of star formation in a volume of space to the local total gas volume density. Volume…
(Abridged) We present a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between star formation rate surface density (SFR SD) and gas surface density (gas SD) at sub-kpc resolution in a sample of 18 nearby galaxies. We use high resolution HI data…
One of the most puzzling properties of observed galaxies is the universality of the empirical correlation between the star formation rate and average gas surface density on kiloparsec scales (the Schmidt law). In this study I present…
The surface density of the star formation rate in different galaxies, as well as in different parts of a single galaxy, scales nonlinearly with the surface density of the total gas. This observationally established relation is known as the…
[abridged] While observations of Local Group galaxies show a very simple, local star formation law in which the star formation rate per unit area in each patch of a galaxy scales linearly with the molecular gas surface density, recent…
The timescale for star formation, a measure of how quickly neutral gas is being converted to stars, is considerably longer than typical dynamical timescales associated with a galactic disk. For purposes of modeling galaxy evolution,…
Star formation rates on the galactic scale are described phenomenologically by two distinct relationships, as emphasized recently by Elmegreen (2002). The first of these is the Schmidt law, which is a power-law relation between the star…
We derive a physical model for the observed relations between star formation rate (SFR) and molecular line (CO and HCN) emission in galaxies, and show how these observed relations are reflective of the underlying star formation law. We do…
The relationship between the star formation rate and surface density of neutral gas within the disk of M33 is examined with new imaging observations of CO J=1-0 emission gathered with the FCRAO 14m telescope and IRAS HiRes images of the 60…
The processes regulating star formation in galaxies are thought to act across a hierarchy of spatial scales. To connect extragalactic star formation relations from global and kpc-scale measurements to recent cloud-scale resolution studies,…
Observations of the interstellar medium are key to deciphering the physical processes regulating star formation in galaxies. However, observational uncertainties and detection limits can bias the interpretation unless carefully modeled.…