Related papers: Molecular Cloud Evolution
We simulate fragmentation and gravitational collapse of cold, magnetized molecular clouds. We explore the nonlinear development of an instability mediated by ambipolar diffusion, in which the collapse rate is intermediate to fast…
Star formation is a fundamental process for galactic evolution. One issue over the last several decades has been determining whether star formation is induced by external triggers or is self-regulated in a closed system. The role of an…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are the most compact, high-mass stellar systems still forming at the present day. The precursor clouds to such systems are, however, rare due to their large initial gas mass reservoirs and rapid dispersal…
The dynamical processes that control star formation in molecular clouds are not well understood, and in particular, it is unclear if rotation plays a major role in cloud evolution. We investigate the importance of rotation in cloud…
Recently reported variations in the typical physical properties of Galactic and extra-Galactic molecular clouds (MCs), and in their ability to form stars have been attributed to local variations in the magnitude of interstellar pressure.…
Molecular clouds, which harbor the birthplaces of stars, form out of the atomic phase of the interstellar medium (ISM). We aim to characterize the atomic and molecular phases of the ISM and set their physical properties into the context of…
Molecular clouds (MC) are structures of dense gas in the interstellar medium (ISM), that extend from ten to a few hundred parsecs and form the main gas reservoir available for star formation. Hydrodynamical simulations of varying complexity…
We present an analysis of the large-scale molecular cloud structure and of the stability of clumpy structures in nearby molecular clouds. In our recent work, we identified a structural transition in molecular clouds by studying the…
This is the first paper about the fragmentation and mass outflow in the molecular cloud by using three-dimensional MHD nested-grid simulations. The binary star formation process is studied paying particular attention to the fragmentation of…
We present a numerical study of the evolution of molecular clouds, from their formation by converging flows in the warm ISM, to their destruction by the ionizing feedback of the massive stars they form. We improve with respect to our…
We present preliminary numerical evidence that the physical conditions in high-mass star forming regions can arise from global gravitational infall, with the velocity dispersions being caused primarily by infall motions rather than random…
Despite the simplicity of theoretical models of supersonically turbulent, isothermal media, their predictions successfully match the observed gas structure and star formation activity within low-pressure (P/k < 10^5 K cm^-3) molecular…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
We investigate the thermal and dynamical evolution of primordial gas clouds in the universe after decoupling. Comparing the time-scale of dynamical evolution with that of fragmentation, we can estimate the typical fragmentation scale. We…
The evolution of collapsing metal free protostellar clouds is investigated for various masses and initial conditions. We perform hydrodynamical calculations for spherically symmetric clouds taking account of radiative transfer of the…
We performed sub-parsec (~0.06pc) scale simulations of two idealised molecular clouds with different masses undergoing a collision. Gas clumps with density greater than 1e-20 g/cm3 (0.3e4 cm-3) were identified as pre-stellar cores and…
Recent radio observations towards nearby galaxies started to map the whole disk and to identify giant molecular clouds (GMCs) even in the regions between galactic spiral structures. Observed variations of GMC mass functions in different…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
It has been known for more than 30 years that star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is slow, in the sense that only ~1% of the gas forms stars every free-fall time. This result is entirely independent of any particular model of…
Molecular cloud observations show that clouds have non-thermal velocity dispersions that scale with the cloud size as $\sigma\propto R^{1/2}$ at constant surface density, and for varying surface density scale with both the cloud`s size and…