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Related papers: Giant molecular clouds in M 33: are they susceptib…

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In this work, we trace the complete life cycle of individual GMCs in high-resolution Milky Way-mass galaxy simulations to determine how different stellar feedback mechanisms and galactic-scale processes govern cloud lifetimes, mass…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-22 Yang Ni , Hui Li , Mark Vogelsberger , Laura V. Sales , Federico Marinacci , Paul Torrey

Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are believed to affect the biospheres of planets as their host star passes through them. We simulate the trajectories of stars and GMCs in the Galaxy and determine how often stars pass through GMCs. We find a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-04-17 Giorgi Kokaia , Melvyn B. Davies

We present the first comparative study of extragalactic GMCs using complete data sets for entire galaxies and a uniform set of reduction and analysis techniques. We present results based on CO observations for the LMC, SMC, M33, M31, IC10…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Leo Blitz , Yasuo Fukui , Akiko Kawamura , Adam Leroy , Norikazu Mizuno , Erik Rosolowsky

The evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), the main sites of high-mass star formation, is an essential process to unravel the galaxy evolution. Using a GMC catalogue of M33 from ALMA-ACA survey, we classified 848 GMCs into three types…

Meidt et al. 2015 derived short lifetimes of 20-30Myr for giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in M51. Their novel approach utilizes a decline of the GMC population during their inter-arm passage from one spiral arm to the next. Using the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-10-14 Jin Koda

Throughout the Milky Way, molecular clouds typically appear filamentary, and mounting evidence indicates that this morphology plays an important role in star formation. What is not known is to what extent the dense filaments most closely…

Recent surveys of the Galactic plane have revealed dozens of giant molecular filaments (GMFs), with lengths ranging from tens to hundreds of parsecs, yet their origins and life cycles remain debated. In this work, we analyze over 700 GMFs…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-12-11 Zipeng Hu , Ke Wang , Mark R. Krumholz , Keyun Su

We present the first measurement of the lifetimes of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) in cosmological simulations at $z = 0$, using the Latte suite of FIRE-2 simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies. We track GMCs with total gas mass $\gtrsim…

We present results of 12CO (1--0) and 13CO (1--0) observations of the northeastern spiral arm segment of IC 342 with a ~50pc resolution carried out with the Nobeyama Millimeter Array. Zero-spacing components were recovered by combining with…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-28 Akihiko Hirota , Nario Kuno , Naoko Sato , Hiroyuki Nakanishi , Tomoka Tosaki , Kazuo Sorai

Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are the sites of star formation and stellar feedback in galaxies. Their properties set the initial conditions for star formation and their lifecycles determine how feedback regulates galaxy evolution. In recent…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-03-21 Mélanie Chevance , Mark R. Krumholz , Anna F. McLeod , Eve C. Ostriker , Erik W. Rosolowsky , Amiel Sternberg

Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are the sites of star formation in the Galaxy. Many of their properties can be understood in terms of a model in which the GMCs and the star-forming clumps within them are in approximate pressure equilibrium,…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Christopher F. McKee

We describe simulations of the response of a gaseous disc to an active spiral potential. The potential is derived from an N-body calculation and leads to a multi-armed time-evolving pattern. The gas forms long spiral arms typical of grand…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Clare Dobbs , Ian Bonnell

The formation of molecular clouds, which serve as stellar nurseries in galaxies, is poorly understood. A class of cloud formation models suggests that a large-scale galactic magnetic field is irrelevant at the scale of individual clouds,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2011-11-14 Hua-bai Li , Thomas Henning

Numerical simulations of the dynamical friction suffered by a star cluster near the Galactic center have been performed with a parallelized tree code. Gerhard (2001) has suggested that dynamical friction, which causes a cluster to lose…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Sungsoo S. Kim , Mark Morris

In this Letter, we analyse the distributions of stellar ages in Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) in spiral arms, inter-arm spurs, and at large galactic radii, where the spiral arms are relatively weak. We use the results of numerical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-17 C. L. Dobbs , J. E. Pringle , T. Naylor

We present the results from simulations of GMC formation in spiral galaxies. First we discuss cloud formation by cloud-cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities, arguing that the former is prevalent at lower galactic surface…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-03-14 Clare Dobbs , Alex Pettitt

We present a catalogue of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) in M33, extracted from cold dust continuum emission. Our GMCs are identified by computing dendrograms. We measure the spatial distribution of these clouds, and characterise their dust…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-12-31 Thomas G. Williams , Walter K. Gear , Matthew W. L. Smith

With the advent of modern observational efforts providing extensive giant molecular cloud catalogues, understanding the evolution of such clouds in a galactic context is of prime importance. While numerous previous numerical and theoretical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-08-08 Alex R. Pettitt , Fumi Egusa , Clare L. Dobbs , Elizabeth J. Tasker , Yusuke Fujimoto , Asao Habe

The evolution of molecular clouds in galactic centres is thought to differ from that in galactic discs due to a significant influence of the external gravitational potential. We present a set of numerical simulations of molecular clouds…

We present the results of a study of simulated Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) formed in a Milky Way-type galactic disk with a flat rotation curve. This simulation, which does not include star formation or feedback, produces clouds with…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-16 Samantha M. Benincasa , Elizabeth J. Tasker , Ralph E. Pudritz , James Wadsley