Related papers: Rapid Star Formation and Global Gravitational Coll…
Using studies of nearby star formation with Spitzer, I will argue that star formation is restricted to dense cores within molecular clouds. The nature of these dense cores and their connection to star formation will be discussed. Their…
In this Letter, we analyse the distributions of stellar ages in Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) in spiral arms, inter-arm spurs, and at large galactic radii, where the spiral arms are relatively weak. We use the results of numerical…
Hydrodynamical simulations of turbulent molecular clouds show that star clusters form from the hierarchical merger of several sub-clumps. We run smoothed-particle hydrodynamics simulations of turbulence-supported molecular clouds with mass…
I describe the scenario of molecular cloud (MC) evolution that has emerged over the past decade or so. MCs can start out as cold atomic clouds formed by compressive motions in the warm neutral medium (WNM) of galaxies. Such motions can be…
The main accretion phase of star formation is investigated in clouds with different metallicities in the range of 0 \le Z \le Z_\odot, resolving the protostellar radius. Starting from a near-equilibrium prestellar cloud, we calculate the…
Newborn stars form within the localized, high density regions of molecular clouds. The sequence and rate at which stars form in dense clumps and the dependence on local and global environments are key factors in developing descriptions of…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
In a series of three papers, we introduced a novel cluster formation model that describes the formation, growth, and disruption of star clusters in high-resolution cosmological simulations. We tested this model on a Milky Way-sized galaxy…
Star formation occurs in hierarchical patterns in both space and time. Galaxies form large regions on the scale of the interstellar Jeans length and these large regions apparently fragment into giant molecular clouds and cloud cores in a…
Whilst young massive clusters (YMCs; $M$ $\gtrsim$ 10$^{4}$ M$_{\odot}$, age $\lesssim$ 100 Myr) have been identified in significant numbers, their progenitor gas clouds have eluded detection. Recently, four extreme molecular clouds…
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…
We argue that rich star clusters take at least several local dynamical times to form, and so are quasi-equilibrium structures during their assembly. Observations supporting this conclusion include morphologies of star-forming clumps,…
A high number of embedded clusters is found in the Galaxy. Depending on the formation scenario, most of them can evolve to unbounded groups that are dissolved within a few tens of Myr. A systematic study of young stellar clusters showing…
Mass segregation is observed in many star clusters, including several that are less than a few Myr old. Timescale arguments are frequently used to argue that these clusters must be displaying primordial segregation, because they are too…
The most recent observational evidence seems to indicate that giant molecular clouds are predominantly gravitationally unbound objects. In this paper we show that this is a natural consequence of a scenario in which cloud-cloud collisions…
During the last two decades, the focus of star formation research has shifted from understanding the collapse of a single dense core into a star to studying the formation hundreds to thousands of stars in molecular clouds. In this chapter,…
We present an investigation of massive star formation that results from the gravitational collapse of massive, magnetized molecular cloud cores. We investigate this by means of highly resolved, numerical simulations of initial magnetized…
The Taurus molecular cloud complex is the paradigm for quiescent, low-density, isolated star formation. Yet the age distribution of its stellar population indicates that star formation is a rapid and dynamic process, inconsistent with the…
Satellite galaxies undergo ram pressure stripping, in which their gas is directly removed by a hydrodynamical interaction with the surrounding host halo gas. In clusters, ram pressure stripped tails of gas have been observed to be…