Related papers: Star Formation Relations in Nearby Molecular Cloud…
In this paper we investigate the level of star formation activity within nearby molecular clouds. We employ a uniform set of infrared extinction maps to provide accurate assessments of cloud mass and structure and compare these with…
The relations between star formation and properties of molecular clouds are studied based on a sample of star forming regions in the Galactic Plane. Sources were selected by having radio recombination lines to provide identification of…
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…
We explore the relation between the stellar mass surface density and the mass surface density of molecular hydrogen gas in twelve nearby molecular clouds that are located at $<$1.5 kpc distance. The sample clouds span an order of magnitude…
One of the most important and well-established empirical results in astronomy is the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation between the density of interstellar gas and the rate at which that gas forms stars. A tight correlation between these…
In this paper we investigate scaling relations between star formation rates and molecular gas masses for both local Galactic clouds and a sample of external galaxies. We specifically consider relations between the star formation rates and…
It has been known for more than 30 years that star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is slow, in the sense that only ~1% of the gas forms stars every free-fall time. This result is entirely independent of any particular model of…
I review observational studies of the large-scale star formation process in nearby galaxies. A wealth of new multi-wavelength data provide an unprecedented view on the interplay of the interstellar medium and (young) stellar populations on…
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…
On galactic scales, the surface density of star formation appears to be well correlated with the surface density of molecular gas. This has lead many authors to suggest that there exists a causal relationship between the chemical state of…
[abridged] While observations of Local Group galaxies show a very simple, local star formation law in which the star formation rate per unit area in each patch of a galaxy scales linearly with the molecular gas surface density, recent…
We examined the relations between molecular gas surface density and star formation rate surface density in a 11 square degree region of the Galactic Plane. Dust continuum at 1.1 mm from the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey and 22 micron…
Observations of both star-forming regions and young, gas-free stellar associations indicate that most nearby molecular clouds form stars only over a short time span before dispersal; large-scale flows in the diffuse interstellar medium have…
Using studies of nearby star formation with Spitzer, I will argue that star formation is restricted to dense cores within molecular clouds. The nature of these dense cores and their connection to star formation will be discussed. Their…
The star-forming ability of a molecular cloud depends on the fraction of gas it can cycle into the dense-phase. Consequently, one of the crucial questions in reconciling star-formation in clouds is to understand the factors that control…
We present an analysis of the relationship between molecular gas and current star formation rate surface density at sub-kpc and kpc scales in a sample of 14 nearby star-forming galaxies. Measuring the relationship in the bright, high…
It is well-established that a gas density gradient inside molecular clouds and clumps raises their star formation rate compared to what they would experience from a gas reservoir of uniform density. This effect should be observed in the…
We compare the structure of molecular gas at $40$ pc resolution to the ability of gas to form stars across the disk of the spiral galaxy M51. We break the PAWS survey into $370$ pc and $1.1$ kpc resolution elements, and within each we…
We report the discovery and characterization of a power law correlation between the local surface densities of Spitzer-identified, dusty young stellar objects and the column density of gas (as traced by near-IR extinction) in eight…
We estimate the star formation efficiency per gravitational free fall time, $\epsilon_{\rm ff}$, from observations of nearby galaxies with resolution matched to the typical size of a Giant Molecular Cloud. This quantity, $\epsilon_{\rm…