Related papers: The Milky Way as a Star Formation Engine
Knowledge of the molecular component of the ISM is fundamental to understand star formation. The H2 component appears to dominate the gas mass in the inner parts of galaxies, while the HI component dominates in the outer parts. Observation…
We compare the star-formation history and dynamics of the Milky Way (MW) with the properties of distant disk galaxies. During the first ~4 Gyr of its evolution, the MW formed stars with a high star-formation intensity (SFI), Sigma_SFR~0.6…
Stars are forming in our galaxy at a rate of between 1 and 4 solar masses of stars per year. In contrast to elliptical galaxies, which are largely devoid of star formation, star formation is still going on in spiral galaxies because of…
The past two decades have seen extensive surveys of the far-infrared to submillimeter continuum emission in the plane of our Galaxy. We line out prospects for the coming decade for corresponding molecular and atomic line surveys which are…
The radiative and mechanical interaction of stars with their environment drives the evolution of the ISM and of galaxies as a whole. The far-IR emission (lambda ~30 to 350 microns) from atoms and molecules dominates the cooling of the warm…
The fundamental process of star formation in galaxies involves the interplay between the fueling of star formation via molecular gas and the feedback from recently formed massive stars. This process, by which galaxies evolve, is also…
Recent studies of the nearest star-forming clouds of the Galaxy at submillimeter wavelengths with the Herschel Space Observatory have provided us with unprecedented images of the initial conditions and early phases of the star formation…
The mechanism by which galaxies stop forming stars and get rid of their interstellar medium (ISM) remains elusive. Here, we study a sample of more than two thousand elliptical galaxies in which dust emission has been detected. This is the…
The interstellar medium (ISM) is ubiquitously turbulent across many physically distinct environments within the Galaxy. Turbulence is key in controlling the structure and dynamics of the ISM, regulating star formation, and transporting…
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…
When and how did galaxies form and their metals accumulate? Over the last decade, this has moved from an archeological question to a live investigation: there is now a broad picture of the evolution of galaxies in dark matter halos: their…
In these lectures I review observations of star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies to develop a physical intuition for understanding star formation in the local and high-redshift Universe. A lot of this material is…
Magnetic fields are an important component of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. The thermal gas in the ISM has a multiphase structure, broadly divided into ionised, atomic, and molecular phases. The connection between the…
Understanding star formation is problematic as it originates in the large scale dynamics of a galaxy but occurs on the small scale of an individual star forming event. This paper presents the first numerical simulations to resolve the star…
The conversion of gas into stars is a fundamental process in astrophysics and cosmology. Stars are known to form from the gravitational collapse of dense clumps in interstellar molecular clouds, and it has been proposed that the resulting…
Recent observations in the 21cm line with the Green Bank Telescope have changed our view of the neutral interstellar medium (ISM) in several ways. The new data show that in the inner parts of the Milky Way the disk-halo interface is…
Molecular clouds are a fundamental ingredient of galaxies: they are the channels that transform the diffuse gas into stars. The detailed process of how they do it is not completely understood. We review the current knowledge of molecular…
There is a strong connection between the formation of a disk galaxy and the properties of the interstellar medium (ISM). Theoretical work has typically either focused on the cosmological buildup of a galaxy with a relatively crude model for…
Substructure in the interstellar medium (ISM) is crucial for establishing the correlation between star formation and feedback and has the capacity to significantly perturb stellar orbits, thus playing a central role in galaxy dynamics and…
(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…