Related papers: Low Virial Parameters in Molecular Clouds: Implica…
We present a unified description of the scenario of Global Hierarchical Collapse and fragmentation (GHC) in molecular clouds (MCs), owing to the continuous decrease of the average Jeans mass in the contracting cloud. GHC constitutes a…
We investigate the dependence of stellar properties on the initial mean density of the molecular cloud in which stellar clusters form using radiation hydrodynamical simulations that resolve the opacity limit for fragmentation. We have…
We provide a detailed comparison between the ``turbulent support'' (TS) and ``global hierarchical collapse'' (GHC) models for molecular clouds and star formation, their respective interpretations of the observational data, the features they…
Magnetic fields are often invoked as playing a primary role in star formation and in the formation of high-mass stars. We investigate the effect of magnetic fields on the formation of high-mass cores using the 3-dimensional smoothed…
Context. Molecular Clouds (MCs) are the place where stars are formed and their feedback starts to take place, regulating the evolution of galaxies. Therefore, MCs represent the critical scale at which to study how ultra-violet (UV) photons…
Using a source selection biased towards high mass star forming regions, we used a Large Velocity Gradient (LVG) code to calculate the H2 densities and CS column densities for a sample of Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) 8 micron infrared…
Low-mass stars are generally understood to form by the gravitational collapse of the dense molecular clouds known as starless cores. Continuum observations have not been able to distinguish among the several different hypotheses that…
Star formation is inefficient. Recent advances in numerical simulations and theoretical models of molecular clouds show that the combined effects of interstellar turbulence, magnetic fields and stellar feedback can explain the low…
We show that hydrodynamic turbulent cloud simulations naturally produce large filaments made up of a network of smaller and coherent sub-filaments. Such simulations resemble observations of filaments and fibres in nearby molecular clouds.…
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…
How high-mass stars form remains unclear currently. Calculation suggests that the radiation pressure of a forming star can halt spherical infall, preventing its further growth when it reaches 10 M$_{\odot}$. Two major theoretical models on…
Observations of external galaxies and of local star-forming clouds in the Milky Way have suggested a variety of star formation laws, i.e., simple direct relations between the column density of star formation (Sigma_SFR: the amount of gas…
It has been paid little or no attention to the implications that turbulent fragmentation has on the validity of at least six common assumptions on the Virial Theorem (VT), which are: (i) the only role of turbulent motions within a cloud is…
Criteria for gravitational collapse of expanding shells in rotating, shearing galaxy disks were determined using three-dimensional numerical simulations in the thin shell approximation. The simulations were run over a grid of 7 independent…
We present the results of an ensemble of simulations of the collapse and fragmentation of dense star-forming cores. We show that even with very low levels of turbulence the outcome is usually a binary, or higher-order multiple, system. We…
We investigate the conditions for the existence of an expanding virial shock in the gas falling within a spherical dark-matter halo. The shock relies on pressure support by the shock-heated gas behind it. When the radiative cooling is…
In order to understand the origin of observed molecular cloud properties, it is critical to understand how clouds interact with their environments during their formation, growth, and collapse. It has been suggested that accretion-driven…
We revisit the problem of the star formation timescale and the ages of molecular clouds. The apparent overabundance of star-forming molecular clouds over clouds without active star formation has been thought to indicate that molecular…
We investigate the possibility of very early formation of primordial star clusters from high-\sigma perturbations in cold dark matter dominated structure formation scenarios. For this we have developed a powerful 2-level hierarchical…
Radiation feedback from stellar clusters is expected to play a key role in setting the rate and efficiency of star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To investigate how radiation forces influence realistic turbulent systems, we…