Related papers: The Milky Way as a Star Formation Engine
The interstellar medium has a highly filamentary and hierarchical structure, which may play a significant role in star formation. A systematical study on the large-scale filaments towards their physical parameters, distribution, structures…
The ISM is governed by supersonic turbulence on a range of scales. We use this to develop a rigorous excursion-set model for the formation and time evolution of dense gas structures (GMCs, massive clumps, and cores). Supersonic turbulence…
How does turbulence contribute to the formation and structure of the dense interstellar medium (ISM)? Molecular clouds are dense, high-pressure objects. It is usually argued that gravitational confinement causes the high pressures, and that…
We use the COBE/DIRBE (1.2, 2.2, 60, 100, 140, and 240 $\mu$m) maps and the COBE/FIRAS spectra (for the wavelength range 100 - 1000 $\mu$m) to constrain a model for the spatial distribution of the dust, the stars, and the gas in the Milky…
The detailed morphology of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the central kiloparsec of galaxies is controlled by pressure and gravitation. The combination of these forces shapes both circumnuclear star formation and the growth of the…
Dense clumps distributed along filaments are the immediate medium for star formation. Kinematic properties of the clumps, such as velocity gradient and angular momentum, combined with filament orientation, provide important clues to the…
It remains unclear how galactic environment affects star formation and stellar cluster properties. This is difficult to address in Milky Way-mass galaxy simulations because of limited resolution and less accurate feedback compared to…
The increasing number of observations towards different environments in the Milky Way, as well as theoretical and experimental works, are improving our knowledge of the astrochemical processes in the interstellar medium (ISM). In this…
Recent surveys of dust continuum emission at sub-mm wavelengths have shown that filamentary molecular clouds are ubiquitous along the Galactic plane. These structures are inhomogeneous, with over-densities that are sometimes associated with…
We investigate the formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in a Milky-Way-like disk galaxy with a flat rotation curve. We perform a series of 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations that follow both the…
We present a review of recent studies of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, in particular based on large samples of non-kinematically selected stars with available proper motions. The Milky Way is argued to be a reasonable…
We study the dust evolution in galaxies by implementing a detailed dust prescription in the SAGE semi-analytical model for galaxy formation. The new model, called Dusty SAGE, follows the condensation of dust in the ejecta of type II…
During the last two decades, the focus of star formation research has shifted from understanding the collapse of a single dense core into a star to studying the formation hundreds to thousands of stars in molecular clouds. In this chapter,…
Interstellar dust plays a central role in the evolution of galaxies by shaping star formation, altering observed stellar properties, and redistributing radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. In the Milky Way, dust is concentrated in…
We present simulations of the magnetized interstellar medium (ISM) in models of massive star forming (40 Msun / yr) disk galaxies with high gas surface densities (~100 Msun / pc^2) similar to observed star forming high-redshift disks. We…
Stars and planetary systems are formed out of molecular clouds in the interstellar medium. Although the sequence of steps involved in star formation are generally known, a comprehensive theory which describes the details of the processes…
In the past decade filaments have been recognised as a major structural element of the interstellar medium, the densest of these filaments hosting the formation of most stars. In some star-forming molecular clouds converging networks of…
We study the formation of giant dense cloud complexes and of stars within them by means of SPH numerical simulations of the mildly supersonic collision of gas streams (``inflows'') in the warm neutral medium (WNM). The resulting…
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…
The interstellar medium is a key ingredient that governs star formation in galaxies. We present a detailed study of the infrared (~ 1-500 micron) spectral energy distributions of a large sample of 193 nearby (z ~ 0.088) luminous infrared…