Related papers: Inefficient star formation through turbulence, mag…
Stars generally form faster than the ambipolar diffusion time, suggesting that several processes short circuit the delay and promote a rapid collapse. These processes are considered here, including turbulence compression in the outer parts…
Whether or not molecular clouds and embedded cloud fragments are stable against collapse is of utmost importance for the study of the star formation process. Only "supercritical" cloud fragments are able to collapse and form stars. The…
Stellar feedback plays a key role in galaxy formation by regulating star formation, driving interstellar turbulence and generating galactic scale outflows. Although modern simulations of galaxy formation can resolve scales of 10-100 pc,…
A key uncertainty in galaxy evolution is the physics regulating star formation, ranging from small-scale processes related to the life-cycle of molecular clouds within galaxies to large-scale processes such as gas accretion onto galaxies.…
A fundamental property of molecular clouds is that they are turbulent, but how this turbulence is generated and maintained is unknown. One possibility is that stars forming within the cloud regenerate turbulence via their outflows, winds…
Energetic feedback from star clusters plays a pivotal role in shaping the dynamical evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To study the effects of stellar feedback on the star formation efficiency of the clouds and the dynamical…
The implementation of star formation and stellar feedback in cosmological simulations plays a critical role in shaping galaxy properties. In the first paper of the series, we presented a new method to model star formation as a collection of…
Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. For several decades it has been thought that stellar birth is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity and magnetostatic support,…
A numerical shearing box is used to perform three-dimensional simulations of a 1 kpc stratified cubic box of turbulent and self-gravitating interstellar medium (in a rotating frame) with supernovae and HII feedback. We vary the value of the…
Molecular cloud structure is regulated by stellar feedback in various forms. Two of the most important feedback processes are UV photoionisation and supernovae from massive stars. However, the precise response of the cloud to these…
We investigate how the removal of interstellar material by stellar feedback limits the efficiency of star formation in molecular clouds and how this determines the shape of the mass function of young star clusters. In particular, we derive…
We present an idealized, semi-empirical model for the evolution of gravitationally contracting molecular clouds (MCs) and their star formation rate (SFR) and efficiency (SFE). The model assumes that the instantaneous SFR is given by the…
We present a model for star formation and supernova feedback that describes the multi-phase structure of star forming gas on scales that are typically not resolved in cosmological simulations. Our approach includes radiative heating and…
Understanding star formation is problematic as it originates in the large scale dynamics of a galaxy but occurs on the small scale of an individual star forming event. This paper presents the first numerical simulations to resolve the star…
The star formation rate (SFR) in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ, i.e. the central 500 pc) of the Milky Way is lower by a factor of >10 than expected for the substantial amount of dense gas it contains, which challenges current star…
Star formation in our Galaxy occurs in molecular clouds that are self-gravitating, highly turbulent, and magnetized. We study the conditions under which cloud cores inherit large-scale magnetic field morphologies and how the field is…
We present the results of an ensemble of simulations of the collapse and fragmentation of dense star-forming cores. We show that even with very low levels of turbulence the outcome is usually a binary, or higher-order multiple, system. We…
(Abridged) We explore, by means of a large ensemble of SPH simulations, how the level of turbulence affects the collapse and fragmentation of a star-forming core. All our simulated cores have the same, except that we vary (a) the initial…
Star formation is an inefficient process and in general only a small fraction of the gas in a giant molecular cloud (GMC) is turned into stars. This is partly due to the negative effect of stellar feedback from young massive star clusters.…
(Abridged) The observational determination of the behaviour of the star formation rate (SFR) with look-back time or redshift has two main weaknesses: 1- the large uncertainty of the dust/extinction corrections, and 2- that systematic errors…