Related papers: On the time variability of the star formation effi…
The time-scales associated with various stages of the star formation process represent major unknowns in our understanding of galactic evolution, as well as of star and planet formation. This is the second paper in a series aiming to…
We study the effect of stellar feedback (photodissociation/ionization, radiation pressure and winds) on the evolution of a Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC), by means of a 3D radiative transfer, hydro-simulation implementing a complex chemical…
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…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
Radiation feedback from stellar clusters is expected to play a key role in setting the rate and efficiency of star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To investigate how radiation forces influence realistic turbulent systems, we…
We explore the impact of star formation and thermal stellar feedback on the giant molecular cloud (GMC) population forming in a M83-type barred spiral galaxy. We compare three high-resolution simulations (1.5 pc cell size) with different…
Star formation is inefficient. Only a few percent of the available gas in molecular clouds forms stars, leading to the observed low star formation rate (SFR). The same holds when averaged over many molecular clouds, such that the SFR of…
Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and their stellar offspring are the building blocks of galaxies. The physical characteristics of GMCs and their evolution are tightly connected to galaxy evolution. The macroscopic properties of the…
Star formation is inefficient. Only a few percent of the available gas in molecular clouds forms stars, leading to the observed low star formation rate (SFR). The same holds when averaged over many molecular clouds, such that the SFR of…
We suggest that molecular cloud (MC) turbulence is a consequence of the very process of MC formation by collisions of larger-scale flows in the diffuse atomic gas, which generate turbulence in the accumulated gas through bending- mode…
The efficiency of star formation, defined as the ratio of the stellar to total (gas and stellar) mass, is observed to vary from a few percent in regions of dispersed star formation to about a third in cluster-forming cores. This difference…
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,…
We analyze the first giant molecular cloud (GMC) simulation to follow the formation of individual stars and their feedback from jets, radiation, winds, and supernovae, using the STARFORGE framework in the GIZMO code. We evolve the GMC for…
Contemporary galactic star formation occurs predominantly within gravitationally unstable, cold, dense molecular gas within supersonic, turbulent, magnetized giant molecular clouds (GMCs). Significantly, because the chemical evolution…
The observed star formation rate of the Milky Way can be explained by applying a metallicity-dependent factor to convert CO luminosity to molecular gas mass and a star formation efficiency per free-fall time that depends on the virial…
We present a suite of 3D multi-physics MHD simulations following star formation in isolated turbulent molecular gas disks ranging from 5 to 500 parsecs in radius. These simulations are designed to survey the range of surface densities…
Stellar feedback influences the star formation rate (SFR) and the interstellar medium of galaxies in ways that are difficult to quantify numerically, because feedback is an essential ingredient of realistic simulations. To overcome this, we…
We discuss star formation in the turbulent interstellar medium. We argue that morphological appearance and dynamical evolution of the gas is primarily determined by supersonic turbulence, and that stars form via a process we call…
Observations suggest that star formation occurs in only one or two crossing times for a range of scales spanning a factor of 1000. These observations include (1) measurements of embedded cluster ages in comparison with the cloud core…
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…