Related papers: The Interstellar Medium White Paper
Stellar systems are often formed through the collapse of dense molecular clouds which, in turn, return copious amounts of atomic and molecular material to the interstellar medium. An in-depth understanding of chemical evolution during this…
The advent of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has enabled a new era for studies of the formation and assembly of distant galaxies. Cosmological deep field surveys with ALMA and other interferometers have flourished…
Interstellar dust appears in a number of roles in the interstellar medium. Historically, the most familiar one is as a source of extinction in the optical. Absorbed optical and ultraviolet light heats the dust, whence infrared (including…
In star forming disk galaxies, matter circulation between stars and the interstellar gas, and, in particular the energy input by random and clustered supernova explosions, determine the dynamical and chemical evolution of the ISM, and hence…
The interstellar medium contains filamentary structure over a wide range of scales. Understanding the role of this structure, both as a conduit of gas across the scales and a diagnostic tool of local physics, is a major focus of star…
In this chapter we review recent advances in understanding the roles that magnetic fields play throughout the star formation process, gained through observations and simulations of molecular clouds, the dense, star-forming phase of the…
We use the cosmological semi-analytic model (SAM) for galaxy formation presented in Paper I to study the metallicities and abundance ratios of the intracluster medium (ICM) within the hierarchical structure formation paradigm. By requiring…
This review describes our current understanding of interstellar extinction. This differ substantially from the ideas of the 20th century. With infrared surveys of hundreds of millions of stars over the entire sky, such as 2MASS,…
In popular cosmological scenarios, some time beyond a redshift of 10, stars within protogalaxies created the first heavy elements; these systems, together perhaps with an early population of quasars, generated the ultraviolet radiation and…
Galactic dust constitutes approximately half of the elements more massive than helium produced in stellar nucleosynthesis. Notwithstanding the formation of dust grains in the dense, cool atmospheres of late-type stars, there still remain…
The galactic supershells are cavities in the interstellar medium. These shells can be explained by introducing the concept of superbubbles, the theoretical result of multiple supernova. The superbubbles can be analytically described if the…
Studies of the molecular interstellar medium that fuels star formation and supermassive black hole growth in galaxies at cosmological distances have undergone tremendous progress over the past few years. Based on the detection of molecular…
Molecules and dust are formed in and around the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and supernovae (SNe), and are ejected into the interstellar medium (ISM) through the stellar wind. The dust and gas contain elements newly synthesised in…
Knowledge of the molecular component of the ISM is fundamental to understand star formation. The H2 component appears to dominate the gas mass in the inner parts of galaxies, while the HI component dominates in the outer parts. Observation…
Several structures have been discovered embedded in regions of recent or ongoing star formation, which point to the importance of the interaction between fast moving wind-blowing stars and their environment. Using hydrodynamic simulations,…
The formation and evolution of stellar clusters is intimately linked to that of their host galaxies. To study this connection, we present the EMP-Pathfinder suite of cosmological zoom-in Milky Way-mass simulations. These simulations contain…
This review presents a perspective on recent advances in understanding neutral ISM structure in external galaxies. HI is a fundamental probe of galactic baryonic material, and its structure and distribution offer vital signatures of…
Most stars are born in rich young stellar clusters (YSCs) embedded in giant molecular clouds. The most massive stars live out their short lives there, profoundly influencing their natal environments by ionizing HII regions, inflating…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) plays a crucial role in determining the number of surviving stars in galaxies, the chemical composition of the interstellar medium, and the distribution of light in galaxies. A key unsolved question…
Astrochemistry has been widely developed as a power tool to probe physical properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) in various conditions of the Milky Way (MW) Galaxy, and in near and distant galaxies. Most current studies conventionally…