Related papers: Massive Star Formation
The formation of massive stars in close binary systems is complicated due to their high radiation pressure, the crowded environment and the expected minimum separation for fragmentation being many times greater than the orbital separation.…
In young star clusters, the density can be high enough and the velocity dispersion low enough for stars to collide and merge with a significant probability. This has been suggested as a possible way to build up the high-mass portion of the…
The physical mechanism that allows massive stars to form is a major unsolved problem in astrophysics. Stars with masses $\gtsim 20$ $\msun$ reach the main sequence while still embedded in their natal clouds, and the immense radiation output…
Massive stars have a profound influence on the Universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. We review the current status of observational and theoretical research in this field, describing the various stages of an evolutionary…
The formation mechanism of massive stars remains one of the main open problems in astrophysics, in particular the relationship between the mass of the most massive stars, and that of the cores in which they form. Numerical simulations of…
The current generation of millimeter interferometers have revealed a population of compact (r <~ 0.1 pc), massive (M ~ 100 Msun) gas cores that are the likely progenitors of massive stars. I review models for the evolution of these objects…
Our knowledge of the initial conditions and early stages of high mass star formation is very limited. We will review recent surveys of regions in the early stages of massive star formation using molecular tracers of high density and dust…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
I review the arguments motivating models for massive star formation via stellar collisions. I then describe how the standard accretion scenario, involving the collapse of a quasi-hydrostatic gas core, can produce high-mass stars in the…
Observations indicate that massive stars form in regions of very high surface density, ~1 g cm^-2. Clusters containing massive stars and globular clusters have a comparable column density. The total pressure in clouds of such a column…
We use direct N-body simulations of gas embedded star clusters to study the importance of stellar collisions for the formation and mass accretion history of high-mass stars. Our clusters start in virial equilibrium as a mix of gas and…
The formation of supermassive stars is believed to be an essential intermediate step for the formation of the massive black hole seeds that become the supermassive black holes powering the quasars observed in the early Universe. Numerical…
This article presents recent work to constrain the physical and chemical properties in high-mass star formation based largely on interferometric high-spatial-resolution continuum and spectral line studies at (sub)mm wavelengths. After…
Massive stars produce so much light that the radiation pressure they exert on the gas and dust around them is stronger than their gravitational attraction, a condition that has long been expected to prevent them from growing by accretion.…
The collapse of massive molecular clumps can produce high mass stars, but the evolution is not simply a scaled-up version of low mass star formation. Outflows and radiative effects strongly hinder the formation of massive stars via…
We present an investigation of massive star formation that results from the gravitational collapse of massive, magnetized molecular cloud cores. We investigate this by means of highly resolved, numerical simulations of initial magnetized…
Competitive accretion, a process to explain the origin of the IMF, occurs when stars in a common gravitational potential accrete from a distributed gaseous component. We show that concerns recently raised on the efficiency of competitive…
Cloud environment is thought to play a critical role in determining the mechanism of formation of massive stars. In this contribution we review the physical characteristics of the environment around recently formed massive stars. Particular…
We briefly review the recent numerical works that have been performed to understand the formation of massive stars. After a brief description of the classical works, we review more specifically $i)$ the problem of building stars more…
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…