Related papers: Unbound Star-forming Molecular Clouds
Star clusters are known to be formed in turbulent molecular clouds. How turbulence is driven in molecular clouds and what effect this has on star formation is still unclear. We compare a simulation setup with turbulent driving everywhere in…
Non-ideal MHD effects are thought to be a crucial component of the star-formation process. Numerically, several complications render the study of non-ideal MHD effects in 3D simulations extremely challenging and hinder our efforts of…
The fragmentation of gas to form stars in molecular clouds is intrinsically linked to the turbulence within them. These internal motions are set at the birth of the cloud and may vary with galactic environment and as the cloud evolves. In…
Observations reveal concentrations of molecular line emission on the sky, called ``clumps,'' in dense, star-forming molecular clouds. These clumps are believed to be the eventual sites of star formation. We study the three-dimensional…
We leverage recent numerical simulations of highly resolved star-forming regions in a Milky Way-like Galaxy to explore the nature of extended gaseous envelopes around molecular clouds. We extract a sample of two dozen star-forming clouds…
Molecular clouds are supported by turbulence and magnetic fields, but quantifying their influence on cloud lifecycle and star formation efficiency (SFE) remains an open question. We perform radiation MHD simulations of star-forming giant…
The past decade has seen an increase of star formation studies made at the molecular cloud scale, motivated mostly by the deployment of a wealth of sensitive infrared telescopes and instruments. Embedded clusters, long recognised as the…
We investigate the impact of galactic environment on the properties of simulated giant molecular clouds formed in a M83-type barred spiral galaxy. Our simulation uses a rotating stellar potential to create the grand design features and…
We revisit the origin of Larson's scaling relations, which describe the structure and kinematics of molecular clouds, based on recent observations and large-scale simulations of supersonic turbulence. Using dimensional analysis, we first…
We use the 13CO(2-1) emission from the SEDIGISM high-resolution spectral-line survey of the inner Galaxy, to extract the molecular cloud population with a large dynamic range in spatial scales, using the SCIMES algorithm. This work compiles…
The distribution of liquid water in ice-free clouds determines their radiative properties, a significant source of uncertainty in weather and climate models. Evaporation and turbulent mixing cause a cloud to display large variations in…
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…
We analyse the results of four simulations of isolated galaxies: two with a rigid spiral potential of fixed pattern speed, but with different degrees of star-formation induced feedback, one with an axisymmetric galactic potential and one…
We test the hypothesis that globular clusters form in supergiant molecular clouds within high-redshift galaxies. Numerical simulations demonstrate that such large, dense, and cold gas clouds assemble naturally in current hierarchical models…
This paper describes 3D simulations of the formation of collapsing cold clumps via thermal instability inside a larger cloud complex. The initial condition was a diffuse atomic, stationary, thermally unstable, 200pc diameter spherical cloud…
We investigate star formation at very early evolutionary phases in five massive clouds in the inner 500 pc of the Galaxy, the Central Molecular Zone. Using interferometer observations of H$_2$O masers and ultra-compact H II regions, we find…
We present a numerical study of the evolution of molecular clouds, from their formation by converging flows in the warm ISM, to their destruction by the ionizing feedback of the massive stars they form. We improve with respect to our…
We review the progress made in understanding molecular cloud formation and evolution toward star formation since the first Crete conference in 1990. It now seems clear that molecular clouds in the Galaxy at least form from compressed HI…
The mass function of molecular clouds and clumps is shallower than the mass function of young star clusters, gas-embedded and gas-free alike, as their respective mass function indices are $\beta_0 \simeq 1.7$ and $\beta_\star \simeq 2$. We…
(Abridged) The formation of molecular clouds (MCs) from the diffuse interstellar gas appears to be a necessary step for star formation, as young stars invariably occur within them. However, the mechanisms controlling the formation of MCs…