Related papers: Star Formation Timescales and the Schmidt Law
Most gas in giant molecular clouds is relatively low-density and forms star inefficiently, converting only a small fraction of its mass to stars per dynamical time. However, star formation models generally predict the existence of a…
The deepest multi-wavelength surveys now provide measurements of star formation in galaxies out to z>1, and allow to reconstruct its history for large parts of the galaxy population. I review recent studies, which have consistently revealed…
Star formation remains an unsolved problem in astrophysics. Numerical studies of large-scale structure simulations cannot resolve the whole process and their approach usually assumes that only gas denser than a typical threshold can host…
We estimate a characteristic timescale for star formation in the spiral arms of disk galaxies, going from atomic hydrogen (HI) to dust-enshrouded massive stars. Drawing on high-resolution HI data from The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey and…
Studies by Lada (2010) and Heiderman (2010) have suggested that star formation mostly occurs above a threshold in gas surface density Sigma of Sigma_c = 120 Msun pc^{-2} (A_K = 0.8). Heiderman infer a threshold by combining low-mass…
One of the most profound empirical laws of star formation is the Gao-Solomon relation, a linear correlation between the star formation rate (SFR) and the dense molecular gas mass. It is puzzling how the complicated physics in star-formation…
We explain the large variety of star formation laws in terms of one single, simple law that can be inferred from the definition of the star formation rate and basic algebra. The resulting equation, $\SFR = \eff\ \Mcollapsing/\tauff$,…
A large fraction of the gas in the Galaxy is cold, dense, and molecular. If all this gas collapsed under the influence of gravity and formed stars in a local free-fall time, the star formation rate in the Galaxy would exceed that observed…
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…
We implement physically motivated recipes for partitioning cold gas into different phases (atomic, molecular, and ionized) in galaxies within semi-analytic models of galaxy formation based on cosmological merger trees. We then model the…
We present a model that explains why galaxies form stars on a time scale significantly longer than the time scales of processes governing the evolution of interstellar gas. We show that gas evolves from a non-star-forming to a star-forming…
We explore various instability models for the onset of star formation in irregular galaxies. Critical gas densities are calculated for gravitational instabilities with a thin, pure-gas disk, and with a thick disk composed of gas and a…
We present an analysis of the relationship between molecular gas and current star formation rate surface density at sub-kpc and kpc scales in a sample of 14 nearby star-forming galaxies. Measuring the relationship in the bright, high…
The goal of this investigation is to reconstruct the cosmic star formation rate density history from local observations and in doing so to gain insight into how galaxies might have formed and evolved. A new chemical evolution model is…
We present a model that unifies the cosmic star formation rate (CSFR), obtained through the hierarchical structure formation scenario, with the (Galactic) local star formation rate (SFR). It is possible to use the SFR to generate a CSFR…
We revisit the main HI-to-stellar mass ratio (gas fraction) scaling relations, taking advantage of the HI spectral stacking technique to understand the dependence of gas content on the structural and star formation properties of nearby…
We use simulations of isolated galaxies with a few parsec resolution to explore the connection between the small-scale star formation rate - gas density relation and the induced large-scale correlation between the star formation rate…
There is ample observational evidence that the star formation rate (SFR) surface density, Sigma_SFR, is closely correlated with the surface density of molecular hydrogen, Sigma_H2. This empirical relation holds both for galaxy-wide averages…
We investigate the relationship between HI, H_2, and the star formation rate (SFR) using azimuthally averaged data for seven CO-bright spiral galaxies. Contrary to some earlier studies based on global fluxes, we find that the SFR surface…
In this paper, we investigate the relationship between star formation and structure, using a mass-complete sample of 27,893 galaxies at $0.5<z<2.5$ selected from 3D-HST. We confirm that star-forming galaxies are larger than quiescent…