Related papers: Star Formation in Self-Gravitating Turbulent Fluid…
Star formation is enhanced in spiral arms because of a combination of orbit crowding, cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities. The characteristic mass for the instability is 10^7 Msun in gas and 10^5 Msun in stars, and the…
The apparent correlation between the specific star formation rate (sSFR) and total stellar mass (M_star) of galaxies is a fundamental relationship indicating how they formed their stellar populations. To attempt to understand this relation,…
We study the gravitational instability of an isothermal gaseous slab formed by cloud-cloud collision and compression at the cloud interface. The compressed gaseous slab rotates and has velocity shear except when the collision is not exactly…
The star formation rate (SFR), the number of stars formed per unit of time, is a fundamental quantity in the evolution of the Universe. While turbulence is believed to play a crucial role in setting the SFR, the exact mechanism remains…
Rapid inflows associated with early galaxy formation lead to the accumulation of self-gravitating gas in the centers of proto-galaxies. Such gas accumulations are prone to non-axisymmetric instabilities, as in the well-known Maclaurin…
We propose that star formation is delayed relative to the inflow rate in rapidly-accreting galaxies at very high redshift (z > 2) because of the energy conveyed by the accreting gas. Accreting gas streams provide fuel for star formation,…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
Turbulence, self-gravity, and cooling convert most of the interstellar medium into cloudy structures that form stars. Turbulence compresses the gas into clouds directly and it moves pre-existing clouds around passively when there are…
(ABBREVIATED) Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. In this review the relation between interstellar turbulence and star formation is discussed. Supersonic turbulence can provide support…
We review current understanding of star formation, outlining an overall theoretical framework and the observations that motivate it. A conception of star formation has emerged in which turbulence plays a dual role, both creating…
Here we model a star forming factory in which the continuous creation of stars results in a highly concentrated, massive (globular cluster-like) stellar system. We show that under very general conditions a large-scale gravitational…
Theory predicts and observations confirm that low-mass stars (like the Sun) in their early life grow by accreting gas from the surrounding material. But for stars ~ 10 times more massive than the Sun (~10 M_sun), the powerful stellar…
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…
We study the galactic-scale triggering of star formation. We find that the largest mass-scale not stabilized by rotation, a well defined quantity in a rotating system and with clear dynamical meaning, strongly correlates with the star…
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 review recent observations of molecular gas in nearby galaxies and their implications for the star formation law on large (>1 kpc) scales. High-resolution data provided by millimetre interferometers are now adding to the basic…
The star formation rate in galaxies should be related to the fraction of gas that can attain densities large enough for gravitational collapse. In galaxies with a turbulent interstellar medium, this fraction is controlled by the effective…
We have reexamined the similarity solution for a self-gravitating isothermal gas sphere and examined implication to star formation in a turbulent cloud. When parameters are adequately chosen, the similarity solution expresses an accreting…
A simple model of gas accretion in young galaxy disks suggests that fast turbulent motions can be driven by accretion energy for a time t_acc~2(epsilon^{0.5} GM^2/xi V^3)^{0.5} where epsilon is the fraction of the accretion energy going…
A dynamical model for star formation on a galactic scale is proposed in which the interstellar medium is constantly condensing to star-forming clouds on the dynamical time of the average midplane density, and the clouds are constantly being…