Related papers: Filaments in the Lupus molecular clouds
In this chapter we review recent advances in understanding the roles that magnetic fields play throughout the star formation process, gained through observations and simulations of molecular clouds, the dense, star-forming phase of the…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
We perform ideal MHD high resolution AMR simulations with driven turbulence and self-gravity and find that long filamentary molecular clouds are formed at the converging locations of large-scale turbulence flows and the filaments are…
Stars form from dense cores in turbulent molecular clouds. According to the standard scenario of star formation, dense cores are created by cloud fragmentation. However, the physical mechanisms driving this process are still not fully…
We present a statistical study of the relative orientation in the plane of the sky between interstellar magnetic fields and filaments hosting cold clumps. For the first time, we consider both the density of the environment and the density…
Two aspects of filamentary molecular cloud evolution are addressed: (1) Exploring analytically the role of the environment for the evolution of filaments demonstrates that considering them in isolation (i.e. just addressing the…
The interstellar medium is threaded by a hierarchy of filaments from large scales (~ 100 pc) to small scales (~ 0.1pc). The masses and lengths of these nested structures may reveal important constraints for cloud formation and evolution,…
We present 850 $\mu$m polarization and $\rm C^{18}O (3-2)$ molecular line observations toward the X-shaped nebula in the California molecular cloud using the JCMT SCUBA-2/POL-2 and HARP instruments. The 850 $\mu$m emission shows that the…
Constraining the physical and chemical evolution of molecular clouds is essential to our understanding of star formation. These investigations often necessitate knowledge of some local representative number density of the gas along the line…
Aims: We derive the probability density functions (PDFs) of column density for a complete sample of prominent molecular cloud complexes closer than 200 pc. Methods: We derive near-infrared dust extinction maps for 23 molecular cloud…
Context. Low-mass star-forming cores differ from their surrounding molecular cloud in turbulence, shape, and density structure. Aims. We aim to understand how dense cores form out of the less dense cloud material by studying the connection…
We present a statistical study of the filamentary structures of the cosmic web in the large hydro-dynamical simulations Illustris-TNG, Illustris, and Magneticum at redshift z=0. We focus on the radial distribution of the galaxy density…
Dynamically significant magnetic fields are routinely observed in molecular clouds, with mass-to-flux ratio lambda = (2 pi sqrt{G}) (Sigma/B) ~ 1 (here Sigma is the total column density and B is the field strength). It is widely believed…
In order to develop a more comprehensive picture of star formation, it is essential to understand the physical relationship between dense cores and the filaments embedding them. There is evidence that magnetic fields play a crucial role in…
In this work, I investigate the properties of Lyman limit systems (LLSs) using state-of-the-art zoom-in cosmological galaxy formation simulations with on the fly radiative transfer, which includes both the cosmic UV background (UVB) and…
Star-forming regions that are visible at 3.6 microns and Halpha but not in the u,g,r,i,z bands of the Sloan Digital Sky survey (SDSS), are measured in five nearby spiral galaxies to find extinctions averaging ~3.8 mag and stellar masses…
Stars primarily form in galactic spiral arms within dense, filamentary molecular clouds. The largest and most elongated of these molecular clouds are referred to as ``bones," which are massive, velocity-coherent filaments (lengths ~20 to…
A growing body of evidence indicates that the formation of filaments in interstellar clouds is a key component of the star formation process. In this paper, we present new Herschel PACS and SPIRE observations of the B59 and Stem regions in…
Cold, dense filaments, some appearing as infrared dark clouds, are the nurseries of stars. Tremendous progress in terms of temperature, density distribution and gas kinematics has been made in understanding the nature of these filaments.…
A fundamental physical basis is provided for the recently obtained minimum column density (1gcm-2) for massive star formation.