Related papers: The Free-Fall time of finite Sheets and Filaments
We investigate the collapse of non-spherical substructures, such as sheets and filaments, which are ubiquitous in molecular clouds. Such non-spherical substructures collapse homologously in their interiors but are influenced by an edge…
We estimate the star formation efficiency per gravitational free fall time, $\epsilon_{\rm ff}$, from observations of nearby galaxies with resolution matched to the typical size of a Giant Molecular Cloud. This quantity, $\epsilon_{\rm…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…
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…
We introduce a model for the large-scale, global 3D structure of molecular clouds. Motivated by the morphological appearance of clouds in surface density maps, we model clouds as cylinders, with the aim of backing out information about the…
We test some ideas for star formation relations against data on local molecular clouds. On a cloud by cloud basis, the relation between the surface density of star formation rate and surface density of gas divided by a free-fall time,…
Two aspects of filamentary molecular cloud evolution are addressed: (1) Exploring analytically the role of the environment for the evolution of filaments demonstrates that considering them in isolation (i.e. just addressing the…
This paper describes 3D simulations of the formation of collapsing cold clumps via thermal instability inside a larger cloud complex. The initial condition was a diffuse atomic, stationary, thermally unstable, 200pc diameter spherical cloud…
We construct a filament catalogue using an extension of the halo based filament finder of Zhang et al.(2009), in a 250 Mpc/h side N-body simulation, and study the properties of filaments ending upon or surrounding galaxy clusters (within 10…
On average molecular clouds convert only a small fraction epsilon_ff of their mass into stars per free-fall time, but differing star formation theories make contrasting claims for how this low mean efficiency is achieved. To test these…
We present two-dimensional simulations of finite, self-gravitating gaseous sheets. Unlike the case of infinite sheets, such configurations do not constitute equilibrium states but instead are subject to global collapse unless countered by…
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…
We report on the filaments that develop self-consistently in a new numerical simulation of cloud formation by colliding flows. As in previous studies, the forming cloud begins to undergo gravitational collapse because it rapidly acquires a…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
Filamentary structures identified in far-infrared observations of molecular clouds are typically found to have full-widths at half-maximum $\sim\!0.1$ pc. However, the physical explanation for this phenomenon is currently uncertain. We use…
Filaments are ubiquitous in the universe. Recent observations have revealed that stars and star clusters form preferentially along dense filaments. Understanding the formation and properties of filaments is therefore a crucial step in…
We apply gravity-based and density-based methods to identify clouds in numerical simulations of the star-forming, three-phase interstellar medium (ISM), and compare their properties and their global correlation with the star formation rate…
We perform ideal MHD high resolution AMR simulations with driven turbulence and self-gravity and find that long filamentary molecular clouds are formed at the converging locations of large-scale turbulence flows and the filaments are…
Recent surveys of dust continuum emission at sub-mm wavelengths have shown that filamentary molecular clouds are ubiquitous along the Galactic plane. These structures are inhomogeneous, with over-densities that are sometimes associated with…
A comparison of accretion and (turbulent) magnetic diffusion timescales for sheets and filaments demonstrates that dense star-forming clouds generally will -- under realistic conditions -- become supercritical due to mass accretion on…