Related papers: Modelling the structure of molecular clouds: I. A …
We review the progress that has been made in observing and analyzing molecular cloud structure in recent years. Structures are self-similar over a wide range of scales with similar power law indices independent of the star forming nature of…
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…
We develop a statistical approach for description of dense structures (cores) in molecular clouds that might be progenitors of stars. Our basic assumptions are a core mass-density relationship and a power-law density distribution of these…
Molecular clouds (MCs) are highly structured and ``turbulent''. Colliding gas streams of atomic hydrogen have been suggested as a possible source of MCs, imprinting the filamentary structure as a consequence of dynamical and thermal…
We study the formation of giant dense cloud complexes and of stars within them by means of SPH numerical simulations of the mildly supersonic collision of gas streams (``inflows'') in the warm neutral medium (WNM). The resulting…
Observations show that molecular gas in spiral galaxies is organized into a network of interconnected systems through the gravitational coupling of multi-scale hub-filament structures. Building on this picture, we model molecular gas in the…
The structure of cloud complexes appears to be well described by a "tree structure" representation when the image is partitioned into "clouds". In this representation, the parent-child relationships are assigned according to containment.…
In previous contributions, we have presented an analytical model describing the evolution of molecular clouds (MCs) undergoing hierarchical gravitational contraction. The cloud's evolution is characterized by an initial increase in its…
Molecular clouds (MC) are structures of dense gas in the interstellar medium (ISM), that extend from ten to a few hundred parsecs and form the main gas reservoir available for star formation. Hydrodynamical simulations of varying complexity…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
We introduce a model for the large-scale, global 3D structure of molecular clouds. Motivated by the morphological appearance of clouds in surface density maps, we model clouds as cylinders, with the aim of backing out information about the…
We study the mass-density relationship n ~ m^x in molecular cloud condensations (clumps), considering various equipartition relations between their gravitational, kinetic, internal and magnetic energies. Clumps are described statistically,…
We analyze the physical properties and energy balance of density enhancements in two SPH simulations of the formation, evolution, and collapse of giant molecular clouds. In the simulations, no feedback is included, so all motions are due…
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 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 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…
We present virial models for the global evolution of giant molecular clouds. Focusing on the presence of an accretion flow, and accounting for the amount of mass, momentum, and energy supplied by accretion and star formation feedback, we…
Molecular clouds are the principle stellar nurseries of our universe, keeping them in the focus of both observational and theoretical studies. From observations, some of the key properties of molecular clouds are well known but many…
We aim to obtain the equations which govern the evolution of the mass density profile of a dense irrotational molecular cloud (MC). Our study is based on the notion of "ensemble of MCs", introduced in our previous work. The MCs are modeled…