Related papers: Why are most molecular clouds not gravitationally …
Gravity drives the collapse of molecular clouds through which stars form, yet the exact role of gravity in cloud collapse remains a complex issue. Studies point to a picture where star formation occurs in clusters. In a typical, pc-sized…
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…
In this third paper in our cloud-collision series, we present the results from simulations of head-on collisions with a strongly centrally-condensed initial density profile of $\rm \rho \propto R^{-2}$. We investigate the impact of these…
In this review, I discuss some highlights of recent research on molecular gas in galaxies; large-scale CO maps of nearby galaxies are being made, which extend our knowledge on global properties, radial gradients, and spiral structure of the…
We argue that massive stars are the dominant sources of energy for the turbulent motions within giant molecular clouds, and that the primary agent of feedback is the expansion of H II regions within the cloud volume. This conclusion is…
Most stars form in highly clustered environments within molecular clouds, but eventually disperse into the distributed stellar field population. Exactly how the stellar distribution evolves from the embedded stage into gas-free associations…
The shape of the cold interstellar molecular gas is determined by several processes, including self-gravity, tidal force, turbulence, magnetic field, and galactic shear. Based on the 3D dust extinction map derived by Vergely et al., we…
(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…
The local velocity patterns of star forming regions, young OB stars, nearby OB associations, atomic and molecular gas are confronted with models of an expanding region. We test free expansion from a point or from a ring, expanding 2D shell,…
The observed discrete multiple stellar populations and internal abundance spreads in r- and s-process elements within globular clusters (GCs) have been suggested to be explained self-consistently by discrete star formation events over a…
A dynamical model for star formation on a galactic scale is proposed in which the interstellar medium is constantly condensing to star-forming clouds on the dynamical time of the average midplane density, and the clouds are constantly being…
We demonstrate that the high pressure of the hot intracluster medium (ICM) can trigger the collapse of molecular clouds in a spiral galaxy, leading to a burst of star formation in the clouds. Our hydrodynamical simulations show that the…
Massive stars are key players in the evolution of galaxies, yet their formation pathway remains unclear. In this work, we use data from several galaxy-wide surveys to build an unbiased dataset of ~700 massive young stellar objects (MYSOs),…
To date, most numerical simulations of molecular clouds, and star formation within them, assume a uniform density sphere or box with an imposed turbulent velocity field. In this work, we select molecular clouds from galactic scale…
We study the physical drivers of slow molecular cloud mergers within a simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy in the moving-mesh code Arepo, and determine the influence of these mergers on the mass distribution and star formation efficiency…
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.…
A cloud of gas collapsing under gravity will fragment. We present a new theory for this process, in which layers shocked gas fragment due to their gravitational instability. Our model explains why angular momentum does not inhibit the…
The formation of massive stellar clusters is intricately linked to star formation on local and global scales. All actively star forming galaxies are forming clusters, and the local initial conditions likely determine whether bound massive…
The formation of molecular clouds, which serve as stellar nurseries in galaxies, is poorly understood. A class of cloud formation models suggests that a large-scale galactic magnetic field is irrelevant at the scale of individual clouds,…
Using a new physical model for star formation (Padoan 1995) we have tested the possibility that globular clusters (GCs) are formed from primordial mass fluctuations, whose mass scale ($10^8$ - $10^9$ M$_{\odot}$) is selected out of a CDM…