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Recent cosmological hydrodynamical simulations are able to reproduce numerous statistical properties of galaxies that are consistent with observational data. Yet, the adopted subgrid models strongly affect the simulation outcomes, limiting…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-11-02 Hui Li , Mark Vogelsberger , Federico Marinacci , Laura Sales , Paul Torrey

(Abridged) We present a series of decaying turbulence simulations that represent a cluster-forming clump within a molecular cloud, investigating the role of magnetic fields on the formation of potential star-forming cores. We present an…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-11-07 David A. Tilley , Ralph E. Pudritz

The fragmentation of filaments in molecular clouds has attracted a lot of attention as there seems to be a relation between the evolution of filaments and star formation. The study of the fragmentation process has been motivated by simple…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-03-07 R. -A. Chira , J. Kainulainen , J. C. Ibàñez-Mejía , Th. Henning , M. -M. Mac Low

We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…

Most simulations of galaxies and massive giant molecular clouds (GMCs) cannot explicitly resolve the formation (or predict the main-sequence masses) of individual stars. So they must use some prescription for the amount of feedback from an…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-07-31 Michael Y. Grudić , Philip F. Hopkins

We introduce a new suite of simulations, "The Cloud Factory", which self-consistently forms molecular cloud complexes at high enough resolution to resolve internal substructure (up to 0.25 Msol in mass) all while including galactic-scale…

The star-forming ability of a molecular cloud depends on the fraction of gas it can cycle into the dense-phase. Consequently, one of the crucial questions in reconciling star-formation in clouds is to understand the factors that control…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-12-20 S. Anathpindika , A. Burkert , R. Kuiper

High-velocity clouds (HVCs) may fuel future star formation in the Milky Way, but they must first survive their passage through the hot halo. While recent work has improved our understanding of the survival criterion for cloud-wind…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-08-28 Lori E. Porter , Matthew Abruzzo , Greg L. Bryan , Mary Putman , Yong Zheng , Drummond Fielding

We describe an overall picture of galactic-scale star formation. Recent high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of two-fluid dynamics with cooling/heating and thermal conduction have shown that the formation of molecular clouds…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-07-29 Shu-ichiro Inutsuka , Tsuyoshi Inoue , Kazunari Iwasaki , Takashi Hosokawa

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2014-02-12 Nickolas Moeckel , Andreas Burkert

A key uncertainty in interpreting observations of bimodal merging galaxy clusters is the unknown angle between the subcluster separation vector and the plane of the sky. We present a new method for constraining this key parameter. We find…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2018-09-14 David Wittman , B Hunter Cornell , Jayke Nguyen

We investigate the effect of star formation and diffuse photoelectric heating on the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) formed in high resolution (~< 10 pc) global (~ 20 kpc) simulations of isolated Milky Way-type galaxy disks. The…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-27 Elizabeth J. Tasker

The ever increasing size and complexity of data coming from simulations of cosmic structure formation demands equally sophisticated tools for their analysis. During the past decade, the art of object finding in these simulations has hence…

Modeling galaxy formation in a cosmological context presents one of the greatest challenges in astrophysics today, due to the vast range of scales and numerous physical processes involved. Here we review the current status of models that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-09-23 Rachel S. Somerville , Romeel Davé

Using an SPH simulation of a star-forming region in a molecular cloud, we show that the emergence of a clump mass function (CMF) resembling the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a ubiquitous feature of molecular cloud structure, but…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Rowan J. Smith , Paul C. Clark , Ian A. Bonnell

We study the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) from a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation of a portion of a spiral galaxy, modelled at high resolution, with robust representations of the physics of the interstellar medium.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-03-31 A. Duarte-Cabral , C. L. Dobbs

What is the nature of a star forming clump? Observations reveal these to be chaotic environments being modified and influenced by many physical processes. However, numerical simulations often define these initial star forming clumps to be…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-06-07 James Wurster , Connar Rowan

Recently reported variations in the typical physical properties of Galactic and extra-Galactic molecular clouds (MCs), and in their ability to form stars have been attributed to local variations in the magnitude of interstellar pressure.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-01-18 S. Anathpindika , A. Burkert , R. Kuiper

Molecular cloud observations show that clouds have non-thermal velocity dispersions that scale with the cloud size as $\sigma\propto R^{1/2}$ at constant surface density, and for varying surface density scale with both the cloud`s size and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-06-15 Juan C. Ibáñez-Mejía , Mordecai-Mark Mac Low , Ralf S. Klessen , Christian Baczynski

Cosmological simulations are a powerful tool to advance our understanding of galaxy formation and many simulations model key properties of real galaxies. A question that naturally arises for such simulations in light of high-quality…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-09-10 Lingyi Zhou , Stefan T. Radev , William H. Oliver , Aura Obreja , Zehao Jin , Tobias Buck