Related papers: Is molecular gas necessary for star formation?
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
Shells are fine stellar structures identified by their arc-like shapes present around a galaxy and currently thought to be vestiges of galaxy interactions and/or mergers. The study of their number, geometry, stellar populations and gas…
Stars form within molecular clouds, so characterizing the physical states of molecular clouds is key in understanding the process of star formation. Cloud structure and stability is frequently assessed using metrics including the virial…
How starburst clusters form out of molecular clouds is still an open question. In this article, I highlight some of the key constraints in this regard, that one can get from the dynamical evolutionary properties of dense stellar systems. I…
[Abridged] Do some environments favor efficient conversion of molecular gas into stars? To answer this, we need to be able to estimate the H2 mass. Traditionally, this is done using CO and a few assumptions but the Herschel observations in…
We examine how the atomic and molecular gas components of galaxies evolve to higher redshifts using the semi-analytic galaxy formation models of Fu et al. (2010) in which we track the surface density profiles of gas in disks. We adopt two…
Star formation occurs within dense regions of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), however, exactly how gas collects and evolves to form individual stars and what role dense cores play remains unclear. We use the Lagrangian cell information in…
The formation of stars and planetary systems is a complex phenomenon, which relies on the interplay of multiple physical processes. Nonetheless, it represents a crucial stage for our understanding of the Universe, and in particular of the…
Evidence is summarized that suggests that when a protogalaxy collapses, a fraction $f$ of its gas fails to heat to the virial temperature, where $f$ is large for haloes less massive than the value $M^*$ associated with $L^*$ galaxies. Stars…
The processes regulating star formation in galaxies are thought to act across a hierarchy of spatial scales. To connect extragalactic star formation relations from global and kpc-scale measurements to recent cloud-scale resolution studies,…
Dust grains coagulate into larger aggregates in dense gas. This changes their size distribution and possibly affects the thermal evolution of star-forming clouds. We here investigate dust coagulation in collapsing pre-stellar cores with…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…
One of the last missing pieces in the puzzle of galaxy formation and evolution through cosmic history is a detailed picture of the role of the cold gas supply in the star-formation process. Cold gas is the fuel for star formation, and thus…
The basic mechanism responsible for the widespread condensation of MgS in the outflows from carbon rich stars on the tip of the AGB is discussed with the aim of developing a condensation model that can be applied in model calculations of…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
Molecular hydrogen has an important role in the early stages of star formation as well as in the production of many other molecules that have been detected in the interstellar medium. In this review we show that it is now possible to study…
In this paper we present gas density, star formation rate, stellar masses, and bulge disk decompositions for a sample of 60 galaxies. Our sample is the combined sample of BIMA SONG, CARMA STING, and PdBI NUGA surveys. We study the effect of…
Atoms and molecules, and in particular CO, are important coolants during the evolution of interstellar star-forming gas clouds. The presence of dust grains, which allow many chemical reactions to occur on their surfaces, strongly impacts…
In order to study whether there is any correlation between nuclear activities, gas content, and the environment where galaxies reside, we have obtained optical and millimetric spectra for a well-defined sample of intermediate Hubble type…
The temperature and density structure of molecular cloud cores are the most important physical quantities that determine the course of the protostellar collapse and the properties of the stars they form. Nevertheless, density profiles often…