Related papers: Low Virial Parameters in Molecular Clouds: Implica…
In the standard scenario of isolated low-mass star formation, strongly magnetized molecular clouds are envisioned to condense gradually into cores, driven by ambipolar diffusion. Once the cores become magnetically supercritical, they…
Of all the factors that influence star formation, magnetic fields are perhaps the least well understood. The goal of this paper is to characterize the 3D magnetic field properties of nearby molecular clouds through various methods of…
A fraction of the dense cores within a turbulent molecular cloud will eventually collapse to form stars. Identifying the physical criteria for instability and analyzing critical core properties is therefore necessary to star formation…
Sub-virial gravitational collapse is one mechanism by which star clusters may form. Here we investigate whether this mechanism can be inferred from observations of young clusters. To address this question, we have computed SPH simulations…
We investigate how the dynamical state of molecular clouds relates to host galaxy environment, and how this impacts the star formation efficiency in the Milky Way and seven nearby galaxies. We compile measurements of molecular cloud and…
We review the properties of turbulent molecular clouds (MCs), focusing on the physical processes that influence star formation (SF). MC formation appears to occur during large-scale compression of the diffuse ISM driven by supernovae,…
One of the key problems in star formation research is to determine the role of magnetic fields. Starting from the atomic inter-cloud medium (ICM) which has density nH ~ 1 per cubic cm, gas must accumulate from a volume several hundred pc…
Most stars are born in the gaseous proto-cluster environment. The knowledge of this intermediate stage gives more accurate constraints on star formation characteristics. We demonstrate that a virialized globally supported structure, in…
Stars generally form faster than the ambipolar diffusion time, suggesting that several processes short circuit the delay and promote a rapid collapse. These processes are considered here, including turbulence compression in the outer parts…
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…
We present an analytical determination of the star formation rate (SFR) in molecular clouds, based on a time-dependent extension of our analytical theory of the stellar initial mass function (IMF). The theory yields SFR's in good agreement…
The magnetic field of molecular clouds (MCs) plays an important role in the process of star formation: it determins the statistical properties of supersonic turbulence that controls the fragmentation of MCs, controls the angular momentum…
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 present the virial equation of state of low-density nuclear matter composed of neutrons, protons and alpha particles. The virial equation of state is model-independent, and therefore sets a benchmark for all nuclear equations of state at…
We describe an overall picture of galactic-scale star formation. Recent high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of two-fluid dynamics with cooling/heating and thermal conduction have shown that the formation of molecular clouds…
We describe the results of a sequence of simulations of gravitational collapse in a turbulent magnetized region. The parameters are chosen to be representative of molecular cloud material. We find that several protostellar cores and…
We analyze surveys of molecular cloud structures defined by tracers ranging from CO $J = 1-0$ through $^{13}$CO $J = 1-0$ to dust emission together with NH$_3$ data. The mean value of the virial parameter and the fraction of mass in bound…
(Abridged) A procedure is suggested to explore the value of F = alpha^2/mu, where mu = m_e/m_p is the electron-to-proton mass ratio, and alpha is the fine-structure constant. The fundamental physical constants, which are measured in…
Isolated low-mass stars are formed in dense cores of molecular clouds. In the standard picture, the cores are envisioned to condense out of strongly magnetized clouds through ambipolar diffusion. Most previous calculations based on this…
This is the first paper about the fragmentation and mass outflow in the molecular cloud by using three-dimensional MHD nested-grid simulations. The binary star formation process is studied paying particular attention to the fragmentation of…