Related papers: Gravity or Turbulence? The velocity dispersion-siz…
(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…
An analysis of large-area CO J=3-2 maps from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope for 12 nearby spiral galaxies reveals low velocity dispersions in the molecular component of the interstellar medium. The three lowest luminosity galaxies show a…
Observations of turbulent velocity dispersions in the HI component of galactic disks show a characteristic floor in galaxies with low star formation rates and within individual galaxies the dispersion profiles decline with radius. We carry…
We present numerical simulations of the passage of clumpy gas through a galactic spiral shock and the subsequent formation of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). The spiral shock forms dense clouds while dissipating kinetic energy, producing…
We use a suite of 3D simulations of star-forming molecular clouds, with and without stellar feedback, magnetic fields, and driven turbulence, to study the compression and expansion rates of the gas as functions of density. We show that,…
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…
The kinematics of newly-formed star clusters are interesting both as a probe of the state of the gas clouds from which the stars form, and because they influence planet formation, stellar mass segregation, cluster disruption, and other…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
We present virial models for the global evolution of giant molecular clouds. Focusing on the presence of an accretion flow, and accounting for the amount of mass, momentum, and energy supplied by accretion and star formation feedback, we…
We investigate the effects of stellar evolution and dust on measurements of stellar velocity dispersion in mergers of disk galaxies. $N$-body simulations and radiative transfer analysis software are used to obtain mass-weighted and…
(Abridged) We present a series of decaying turbulence simulations that represent a cluster-forming clump within a molecular cloud, investigating the role of magnetic fields on the formation of potential star-forming cores. We present an…
Observations of spiral galaxies show a strong linear correlation between the ratio of molecular to atomic hydrogen surface density R_mol and midplane pressure. To explain this, we simulate three-dimensional, magnetized turbulence, including…
The one-point statistics of column density distributions of turbulent molecular cloud models are investigated and compared with observations. In agreement with the observations, the number N of pixels with surface density S is distributed…
The observational record of turbulence within the molecular gas phase of the interstellar medium is summarized. We briefly review the analysis methods used to recover the velocity structure function from spectroscopic imaging and the…
The gas clouds of the interstellar medium have a fractal structure, the origin of which has generally been thought to lie in turbulence. The energy of turbulence could come from galactic rotation at large-scale, then cascade down to be…
We argue that impact velocities between dust grains with sizes less than $\sim 0.1$ $\mu m$ in molecular cloud cores are dominated by drift arising from ambipolar diffusion. This effect is due to the size dependence of the dust coupling to…
We study the formation of giant dense cloud complexes and of stars within them by means of SPH numerical simulations of the mildly supersonic collision of gas streams (``inflows'') in the warm neutral medium (WNM). The resulting…
I review recent results derived from numerical simulations of the turbulent interstellar medium (ISM), in particular concerning the nature and formation of turbulent clouds, methods for comparing the structure in simulations and…
The spatial range for feedback from star formation varies from molecular cloud disruption on parsec scales to supershells and disk blowout on kiloparsec scales. The relative amounts of energy and momentum given to these scales is important…
Turbulence dissipation is an important process affecting the energy balance in molecular clouds, the birth place of stars. Previously, the rate of turbulence dissipation is often estimated with semi-analytic formulae from simulation.…