Related papers: Accretion and Diffusion Timescales in Sheets and F…
The fragmentation of gas to form stars in molecular clouds is intrinsically linked to the turbulence within them. These internal motions are set at the birth of the cloud and may vary with galactic environment and as the cloud evolves. In…
The gravitational instability of a filamentary molecular cloud in non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics is investigated. The filament is assumed to be in hydrostatic equilibrium. We add the effect of ambipolar diffusion to the filament which is…
The diffusion of astrophysical magnetic fields in conducting fluids in the presence of turbulence depends on whether magnetic fields can change their topology or reconnect in highly conducting media. Recent progress in understanding fast…
We consider the conditions required for a cluster core to shrink, by adiabatic accretion of gas from the surrounding cluster, to densities such that stellar collisions are a likely outcome. We show that the maximum densities attained, and…
The relation between the mass accretion rate onto the circumstellar disc and the rate of mass ejection by magnetically driven winds is investigated using three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations. Using a spherical cloud core with…
Linear analysis of the formation of protostellar cores in planar magnetic interstellar clouds yields information about length scales involved in star formation. Combining these length scales with various distributions of other environmental…
We investigate the impact of different initial conditions for the initial density profile and the initial turbulence on the formation process of protostellar clusters. We study the collapse of dense molecula r cloud cores with…
A series of recent theoretical atomic diffusion studies has address the challenging problem of predicting inhomogeneous vertical and horizontal chemical element distributions in the atmospheres of magnetic ApBp stars. Here we critically…
Accretion onto Classical T Tauri stars is thought to take place through the action of magnetospheric processes, with gas in the inner disk being channeled onto the star's surface by the stellar magnetic field lines. Young stars are known to…
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…
We clarify the mechanism of accelerated core formation by large-scale nonlinear flows in subcritical magnetic clouds by finding a semi-analytical formula for the core formation time and describing the physical processes that lead to them.…
The formation of a star is a dynamic process fed by the gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud core. Theoretical models and observations suggest that the majority of this infalling material settles into a protoplanetary disk before…
This review summarizes the argument for molecular clouds being dominated by turbulence, most likely super-Alfvenic turbulence. Five lines of observational evidence are given: molecular linewidths and line shapes, nonequilibrium chemical…
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.…
Young stars and planetary systems form in molecular clouds. For classical T Tauri stars (CTTS, F-K type precursors) the accretion disk does not reach down to the central star, but it is truncated near the co-rotation radius. The inner edge…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
One of the key problems in star formation research is to determine the role of magnetic fields. Starting from the atomic inter-cloud medium (ICM) which has density nH ~ 1 per cubic cm, gas must accumulate from a volume several hundred pc…
The enormous radiative and mechanical luminosities of massive stars impact a vast range of scales and processes, from the reionization of the universe, to the evolution of galaxies, to the regulation of the interstellar medium, to the…
The Zeeman effect and dust grain alignment are two major methods for probing magnetic fields (B-fields) in molecular clouds, largely motivated by the study of star formation, as the B-field may regulate gravitational contraction and channel…
It is established that the formation of rotationally supported disks during the main accretion phase of star formation is suppressed by a moderately strong magnetic field in the ideal MHD limit. Non-ideal MHD effects are expected to weaken…