Related papers: Why are most molecular clouds not gravitationally …
Star clusters are known to be formed in turbulent molecular clouds. How turbulence is driven in molecular clouds and what effect this has on star formation is still unclear. We compare a simulation setup with turbulent driving everywhere in…
Stars form within molecular clouds but our understanding of this fundamental process remains hampered by the complexity of the physics that drives their evolution. We review our observational and theoretical knowledge of molecular clouds…
The winds and radiation from massive stars clear out large cavities in the interstellar medium. These bubbles, as they have been called, impact their surrounding molecular clouds and may influence the formation of stars therein. Here we…
The discovery of young globular clusters in merging galaxies and other environments provides an opportunity to study directly the process of globular cluster formation. Empirically it appears that globular cluster formation occurs…
We study effect of magnetic field on massive dense core formation in colliding unequal molecular clouds by performing magnetohydrodynamic simulations with sub-parsec resolution (0.015 pc) that can resolve the molecular cores. Initial clouds…
In this paper we investigate the level of star formation activity within nearby molecular clouds. We employ a uniform set of infrared extinction maps to provide accurate assessments of cloud mass and structure and compare these with…
Stars in galaxies form in giant molecular clouds that coalesce when the atomic hydrogen is converted into molecules. There are currently two dominant models for what property of the galactic disk determines its molecular fraction: either…
We model the collision of molecular clouds to investigate the role of the initial properties on the remnants. Our clouds collide and evolve in a background medium that is approximately ten times less dense than the clouds, and we show that…
A strong correlation between atmospheric pressure and molecular gas mass is found in central cluster galaxies and early-type galaxies. This trend and a similar trend with atmospheric gas density would naturally arise if the molecular clouds…
We review the progress made in understanding molecular cloud formation and evolution toward star formation since the first Crete conference in 1990. It now seems clear that molecular clouds in the Galaxy at least form from compressed HI…
Understanding the star formation process is central to much of modern astrophysics. For several decades it has been thought that stellar birth is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity and magnetostatic support, modulated by…
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…
In order to understand the origin of observed molecular cloud properties, it is critical to understand how clouds interact with their environments during their formation, growth, and collapse. It has been suggested that accretion-driven…
I review some recent results about the molecular content of galaxies, obtained essentially from the CO lines, but also dense tracers, or the dust continuum emission. New results have been obtained on molecular cloud physics, and their…
The dense molecular cloud cores that form stars, like other self-gravitating objects, undergo bulk oscillations. Just at the point of gravitational instability, their fundamental oscillation mode has zero frequency. We study, using…
Stars are often observed to form in clusters. It is therefore important to understand how such a region of concentrated mass is assembled out of the diffuse medium and its properties eventually prescribe the important physical mechanisms…
Turbulence, self-gravity, and cooling convert most of the interstellar medium into cloudy structures that form stars. Turbulence compresses the gas into clouds directly and it moves pre-existing clouds around passively when there are…
We demonstrate that single and binary star clusters can be formed during cloud-cloud collisions triggered by the tidal interaction between the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. We run two different sets of self-consistent numerical…
Molecular clouds (MC) are the densest and coldest component of the interstellar gas, and the sites of star formation. They are also turbulent and fractal and their masses and sizes span several orders of magnitude. It is also generally…
Massive stars influence their parental molecular cloud, and it has long been suspected that the development of hydrodynamical instabilities can compress or fragment the cloud. Identifying such instabilities has proved difficult. It has been…