Related papers: Alignment of Protostars and Circumstellar Disks Du…
High-spatial-resolution observations of disks around young stars suggest planetary systems begin forming early, during the protostellar phase (< 1 Myr) when stars accrete most of their mass via infall from the surrounding cloud. During this…
We investigate the formation process of self-gravitating protoplanetary disks in unmagnetized molecular clouds. The angular momentum is redistributed by the action of gravitational torques in the massive disk during its early formation. We…
We use hydrodynamical simulations of a Cartwheel-like ring galaxy, modelled as a nearly head-on collision of a small companion with a larger disc galaxy, to probe the evolution of the gaseous structures and flows, and to explore the…
Hydrodynamical simulations show that a pair of spiral arms can form in the disk around a rapidly-growing young star and that the arms are crucial in transporting angular momentum as the disk accretes material from the surrounding envelope.…
Modeling of the self-consistent formation and evolution of disks as a result of prestellar core collapse reveals an intense early phase of recurrent gravitational instability and clump formation. These clumps generally migrate inward due to…
We present a detailed computational study of the assembly of protostellar disks and massive stars in molecular clouds with supersonic turbulence. We follow the evolution of large scale filamentary structures in a cluster-forming clump down…
Protostellar outflow is a prominent process that accompanies the formation of stars. It is generally agreed that wide-angled protostellar outflows come from the interaction between the wind from a forming star and the ambient gas. However,…
The evolution of circumstellar discs is influenced by their surroundings. The relevant processes include external photoevaporation due to nearby stars, and dynamical truncations. The impact of these processes on disc populations depends on…
In the early stages of star formation, boundary layer accretion, where protostars accrete material from disks extending down to their surfaces, plays a crucial role. Understanding how a magneto-rotational-instability (MRI)-active disk…
We present a numerical simulation of the dynamical collapse of a nonrotating magnetic molecular cloud core and follow the core's evolution through the formation of a central point mass and its subsequent growth to a 1 solar-mass protostar.…
We follow the ambipolar-diffusion--driven formation and evolution of a fragment in a magnetically supported molecular cloud, until a hydrostatic protostellar core forms at its center. This problem was formulated in Paper I. We determine the…
Star formation is one of the least understood processes in cosmic evolution. It is difficult to formulate a general theory for star formation in part because of the wide range of physical processes involved. The interstellar gas out of…
We perform a long-term simulation of star and disk formation using three-dimensional non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics. The simulation starts from a prestellar cloud and proceeds through the long-term evolution of the circumstellar disk until…
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…
Recent observations of young stellar systems with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) are helping to cement the idea that close companion stars form via fragmentation of a…
We formulate a general, steady-state model for the torque on a magnetized star from a surrounding accretion disc. For the first time, we include the opening of dipolar magnetic field lines due to the differential rotation between the star…
The embedded phase of star formation is the crucial phase where most of the stellar mass is assembled. Velocity-resolved spectra reveal an infalling envelope, bipolar outflows, and perhaps an infant circumstellar disk -- all locked together…
Stars form in dense cores of magnetized molecular clouds. If the magnetic flux threading the cores is dragged into the stars, the stellar field would be orders of magnitude stronger than observed. This well-known "magnetic flux problem"…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
Scattering of stars by interstellar clouds or massive clumps increases the stellar velocity dispersion and promotes a radial disk profile that is exponential. Here we show that such scattering reaches a steady-state distribution function of…