Related papers: Unbound Star-forming Molecular Clouds
Molecular clouds often exhibit filamentary or sheet-like shapes. We compute the free-fall time ($\tff$) for finite, uniform, self-gravitating circular sheets and filamentary clouds of small but finite thickness, so that their volume density…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
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…
Supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds is a dominant agent that strongly affects the clouds' evolution and star formation activity. Turbulence may be initiated and maintained by a number of processes, acting at a wide range of physical…
We explore the constraints on globular cluster formation provided by the observed conditions in starbursts where globulars are currently forming, and by the observed properties of young and old globular clusters. We note that the pressure…
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,…
Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are the primary reservoirs of cold, star-forming molecular gas in the Milky Way and similar galaxies, and thus any understanding of star formation must encompass a model for GMC formation, evolution, and…
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…
Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass from the surrounding cloud material. This process is investigated, using numerical models of self-gravitating molecular cloud…
Motivated by the astrophysical problems of star formations from molecular clouds,we make the first step on the possible long time behaviors of certain irregularly-shaped molecular clouds. We emphasis the main difficulty of the blowups of…
Using near infrared UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey data, we make extinction measurements to individual stars along the same line of sight as molecular clouds. Using an existing 3D extinction map of the inner Galaxy, that provides line of…
Molecular clouds are supersonically turbulent. This turbulence governs the initial mass function and the star formation rate. In order to understand the details of star formation, it is therefore essential to understand the properties of…
Filamentary structures are often identified in column density maps of molecular clouds, and appear to be important for both low- and high-mass star formation. Theoretically, these structures are expected to form in regions where the…
The universality of interstellar turbulence is examined from observed structure functions of 27 giant molecular clouds and Monte Carlo modeling. We show that the structure functions, dv=v0 l^gamma, derived from wide field imaging of CO…
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…
Observations that resolve nearby galaxies into individual regions across multiple phases of the gas-star formation-feedback ``matter cycle'' have provided a sharp new view of molecular clouds, star formation efficiencies, timescales for…
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…
The sample of 566 molecular clouds identified in the CO(2--1) IRAM survey covering the disk of M~33 is explored in detail.The clouds were found using CPROPS and were subsequently catalogued in terms of their star-forming properties as…
We simulate mergers between star clusters embedded within their natal giant molecular cloud. We extract initial conditions from cloud-scale simulations of cluster formation and introduce different prescriptions for primordial binaries. We…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…