Related papers: Turbulence decay and cloud core relaxation in mole…
Abundant observational evidence indicates that the cooling time t_cool of the hot ambient medium pervading a massive galaxy does not drop much below 10 times the freefall time t_ff at any radius. Theoretical models have accounted for this…
We investigate turbulent gas motions in spiral galaxies and their importance to star formation in far outer disks, where the column density is typically far below the critical value for spontaneous gravitational collapse. Following the…
We study the interplay between turbulent heating, mixing, and radiative cooling in an idealized model of cool cluster cores. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets are expected to drive turbulence and heat cluster cores. Cooling of the…
Turbulence plays a critical role in regulating star formation in molecular clouds and is also observed in simulations of primordial halos that host Population III (Pop III) stars. The relative velocity between baryons and dark matter at the…
Properties of candidate stars, forming out of molecular clouds, depend on the ambient conditions of the parent cloud. We present a series of 2D and 3D simulations of fragmentation of molecular clouds in starburst regions as well as clouds…
The morphology and kinematics of molecular clouds (MCs) are best explained as the consequence of super--sonic turbulence. Super--sonic turbulence fragments MCs into dense sheets, filaments and cores and large low density ``voids'', via the…
The dynamical processes that control star formation in molecular clouds are not well understood, and in particular, it is unclear if rotation plays a major role in cloud evolution. We investigate the importance of rotation in cloud…
To study the interaction of star-formation and turbulent molecular cloud structuring, we analyse numerical models and observations of self-gravitating clouds using the Delta-variance as statistical measure for structural characteristics. In…
Using numerical simulations of the formation and evolution of stellar clusters within molecular clouds, we show that the stars in clusters formed within collapsing molecular cloud clumps exhibit a constant velocity dispersion regardless of…
Molecular clouds in the central molecular zone (CMZ) have been observed to feature turbulent line widths that are significantly higher, and scale with cloud size more steeply, than in the rest of the Milky Way. In the same Galactic region,…
All molecular clouds are observed to be turbulent, but the origin, means of sustenance, and evolution of the turbulence remain debated. One possibility is that stellar feedback injects enough energy into the cloud to drive observed motions…
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…
I describe the scenario of molecular cloud (MC) evolution that has emerged over the past decade or so. MCs can start out as cold atomic clouds formed by compressive motions in the warm neutral medium (WNM) of galaxies. Such motions can be…
I present an overview of the hierarchy of structures existing in the interstellar medium (ISM) and the possible mechanisms that cause the fragmentation of one level into the next, with the formation of stars as its last step. Within this…
The universality of interstellar turbulence is examined from observed structure functions of 27 giant molecular clouds and Monte Carlo modeling. We show that the structure functions, dv=v0 l^gamma, derived from wide field imaging of CO…
The link between turbulence in star formatting environments and protostellar jets remains controversial. To explore issues of turbulence and fossil cavities driven by young stellar outflows we present a series of numerical simulations…
We study the formation, evolution and collapse of dense cores by tracking structures in a magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a star-forming cloud. We identify cores using the dendrogram algorithm and utilize machine learning techniques,…
Radiation feedback from stellar clusters is expected to play a key role in setting the rate and efficiency of star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To investigate how radiation forces influence realistic turbulent systems, we…
Complex turbulent motions are ubiquitously observed in many astrophysical systems. Their origin, however, is still poorly understood. When cosmic structures form, they grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding environment. We propose…
It has recently been suggested that the typical separation between cores in molecular clouds dominated by turbulence is determined by the sonic scale, the size scale at which the turbulent velocity dispersion equals the sound speed. In this…