Related papers: From Gas to Stars over Cosmic Time
One of the outstanding puzzles about star formation is why it proceeds so slowly. Giant molecular clouds convert only a few percent of their gas into stars per free-fall time, and recent observations show that this low star formation rate…
Gas processes affecting star formation are reviewed with an emphasis on gravitational and magnetic instabilities as a source of turbulence. Gravitational instabilities are pervasive in a multi-phase medium, even for sub-threshold column…
The cosmic star formation rate density first increases with time towards a pronounced peak 10 Gyrs ago (or z=1-2) and then slows down, dropping by more than a factor 10 since z=1. The processes at the origin of the star formation quenching…
Over the past decade increasingly robust estimates of the dense molecular gas content in galaxy populations between redshift 0 and the peak of cosmic galaxy/star formation from redshift 1-3 have become available. This rapid progress has…
We introduce a new model for the structure and evolution of the gas in galactic discs. In the model the gas is in vertical pressure and energy balance. Star formation feedback injects energy and momentum, and non-axisymmetric torques…
Star formation in galaxies is inefficient, and understanding how star formation is regulated in galaxies is one of the most fundamental challenges of contemporary astrophysics. Radiative cooling, feedback from supernovae and active galactic…
(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…
We present a model that explains why galaxies form stars on a time scale significantly longer than the time scales of processes governing the evolution of interstellar gas. We show that gas evolves from a non-star-forming to a star-forming…
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…
Stars and star clusters form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest…
Understanding star formation is problematic as it originates in the large scale dynamics of a galaxy but occurs on the small scale of an individual star forming event. This paper presents the first numerical simulations to resolve the star…
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…
Star formation is one of the least understood processes in cosmic evolution. It is difficult to formulate a general theory for star formation in part because of the wide range of physical processes involved. The interstellar gas out of…
From the time the first stars formed over 13 billion years ago to the present, star formation has had an unexpectedly dynamic history. At first, the star formation rate density increased dramatically, reaching a peak 10 billion years ago…
Star formation in galaxies relies on the availability of cold, dense gas, which, in turn, relies on factors internal and external to the galaxies. In order to provide a simple model for how star formation is regulated by various physical…
We propose a simple analytic model to understand when star formation is time-steady versus bursty in galaxies. Recent models explain the observed Kennicutt-Schmidt relation between star formation rate and gas surface densities in galaxies…
Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…
The empirical laws of star formation suggest that galactic-scale gravity is involved, but they do not identify the actual triggering mechanisms for clusters in the final stages. Many other triggering processes satisfy the empirical laws…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
Star formation depends on the available gaseous "fuel" as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition…