Related papers: Do cloud-cloud collisions trigger high-mass star f…
A fraction of the dense cores within a turbulent molecular cloud will eventually collapse to form stars. Identifying the physical criteria for instability and analyzing critical core properties is therefore necessary to star formation…
Star clusters are known to be formed in turbulent molecular clouds. How turbulence is driven in molecular clouds and what effect this has on star formation is still unclear. We compare a simulation setup with turbulent driving everywhere in…
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 performed a search of star-forming sites influenced by external factors, such as SNRs, HII regions, and cloud-cloud collisions, to understand the star-forming activity in the Galactic center region using the NRO Galactic Center Survey in…
Using Monte Carlo codes, we follow the collisional evolution of clusters in a variety of scenarios. We consider the conditions under which a cluster of main sequence stars may undergo rapid core collapse due to mass segregation, thus…
The star formation rate in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) is an order of magnitude lower than predicted according to star formation relations that have been calibrated in the disc of our own and nearby galaxies. Understanding how and why…
In this third paper in our cloud-collision series, we present the results from simulations of head-on collisions with a strongly centrally-condensed initial density profile of $\rm \rho \propto R^{-2}$. We investigate the impact of these…
We present a unified model for molecular core formation and evolution, based on numerical simulations of converging, supersonic flows. Our model applies to star formation in GMCs dominated by large-scale turbulence, and contains four main…
We discuss the nature of the velocity dispersion vs. size relation for molecular clouds. In particular, we add to previous observational results showing that the velocity dispersions in molecular clouds and cores are not purely functions of…
We discuss the fragmentation of a filamentary cloud on the basis of a 1-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation of a self-gravitating gas cloud. The simulation shows that dense cores are produced with a semi-regular interval in space and time…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
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…
Momentum deposition by radiation pressure from young, massive stars may help to destroy molecular clouds and unbind stellar clusters by driving large-scale outflows. We extend our previous numerical radiation hydrodynamic study of…
We performed $42$ simulations of the first star formation with initial supersonic gas flows relative to the dark matter at the cosmic recombination era. Increasing the initial streaming velocities led to delayed halo formation and increased…
We model the collision of molecular clouds to investigate the role of the initial properties on the remnants. Our clouds collide and evolve in a background medium that is approximately ten times less dense than the clouds, and we show that…
We present observations of the intermediate to massive star-forming region I05345+3157 using the molecular line tracer CS(2-1) with CARMA to reveal the properties of the dense gas cores. Seven gas cores are identified in the integrated…
Molecular clouds are observed to be turbulent, but the origin of this turbulence is not well understood. As a result, there are two different approaches to simulating molecular clouds, one in which the turbulence is allowed to decay after…
Star formation is inefficient. Recent advances in numerical simulations and theoretical models of molecular clouds show that the combined effects of interstellar turbulence, magnetic fields and stellar feedback can explain the low…
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…
Massive stars (M $\gsim 10$ \msun) form from collapse of parsec-scale molecular clumps. How molecular clumps fragment to give rise to massive stars in a cluster with a distribution of masses is unclear. We search for cold cores that may…