Related papers: Star Formation in Atomic Gas
We present a new model to describe the star formation process in galaxies, which includes the description of the different gas phases -- molecular, atomic, and ionized -- together with its metal content. The model, which will be coupled to…
Molecular gas is the key ingredient of the star formation cycle, and tracing its dependencies on other galaxy properties is essential for understanding galaxy evolution. In this work, we explore the relation between the different phases of…
We present an analysis of the molecular and atomic gas emission in the rest-frame far-infrared and sub-millimetre, from the lensed z=2.3 sub-millimetre galaxy SMM J2135-0102. We obtain very high signal-to-noise detections of 11 transitions…
We present numerical computations and analysis of atomic to molecular (HI-to-H$_2$) transitions in cool ($\sim$100 K) low-metallicity dust-free (primordial) gas, in which molecule formation occurs via cosmic-ray driven negative ion…
Stars form from cold molecular interstellar gas. Since this is relatively rare in the local Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way form only a few new stars per year. Typical massive galaxies in the distant Universe formed stars an order of…
We explore various instability models for the onset of star formation in irregular galaxies. Critical gas densities are calculated for gravitational instabilities with a thin, pure-gas disk, and with a thick disk composed of gas and a…
We present the results of a variety of simulations concerning the evolution of multiphase (inhomogeneous) hot interstellar medium (ISM) in elliptical galaxies. We assume the gases ejected from stars do not mix globally with the…
Primordial star formation appears to result in stars at least an order of magnitude more massive than modern star formation. It has been proposed that the transition from primordial to modern initial mass functions occurs due to the onset…
We study the relation between molecular gas and star formation in a volume-limited sample of 222 galaxies from the COLD GASS survey, with measurements of the CO(1-0) line from the IRAM 30m telescope. The galaxies are at redshifts…
I review observational studies of the large-scale star formation process in nearby galaxies. A wealth of new multi-wavelength data provide an unprecedented view on the interplay of the interstellar medium and (young) stellar populations on…
A field with particularly exciting results over the past few years is the study of the interaction of cosmic rays with interstellar matter. For star formation to take place, gas and dust need to be sufficiently cold for gravity to overcome…
We describe a phenomenological model for molecular hydrogen formation suited for applications in galaxy formation simulations, which includes on-equilibrium formation of molecular hydrogen on dust and approximate treatment of both its…
We present a comprehensive suite of high-resolution (parsec-scale), idealised (non-cosmological) galaxy merger simulations (24 runs, stellar mass ratio ~2.5:1) to investigate the connection between interaction-induced star formation and the…
In the Milky Way and other main-sequence galaxies, stars form exclusively in molecular gas, which is traced by CO emission. However, low metallicity dwarf galaxies are often `CO-dark' in the sense that CO emission is not observable even at…
We describe how star formation is expected to proceed in the early metal-free Universe, focusing on the very first generations of stars. We then discuss how the star formation process may change as the effects of metallicity, external…
Observations suggest that star formation occurs in only one or two crossing times for a range of scales spanning a factor of 1000. These observations include (1) measurements of embedded cluster ages in comparison with the cloud core…
Star formation depends critically on cooling mechanisms in the interstellar medium (ISM); however, thermal properties of gas in galaxies at the peak epoch of star formation (z ~ 2) remain poorly understood. A limiting factor in…
Dust and gas energetics are incorporated into a cluster-scale simulation of star formation in order to study the effect of heating and cooling on the star formation process. We build on our previous work by calculating separately the dust…
The timescale for star formation, a measure of how quickly neutral gas is being converted to stars, is considerably longer than typical dynamical timescales associated with a galactic disk. For purposes of modeling galaxy evolution,…
We present an analytical model of the relation between the surface density of gas and star formation rate in galaxies and clouds, as a function of the presence of supersonic turbulence and the associated structure of the interstellar…