Related papers: Observational Evidence of Dynamic Star Formation R…
The processes regulating star formation in galaxies are thought to act across a hierarchy of spatial scales. To connect extragalactic star formation relations from global and kpc-scale measurements to recent cloud-scale resolution studies,…
Studies both of entire galaxies and of local Galactic star formation indicate a dependency of a molecular cloud's star formation rate (SFR) on its dense gas mass. In external galaxies, such measurements are derived from HCN(1-0)…
Stars form from cold molecular interstellar gas. Since this is relatively rare in the local Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way form only a few new stars per year. Typical massive galaxies in the distant Universe formed stars an order of…
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…
The star formation rate density (SFRD) is an important tool in galaxy evolution that allows us to identify at which cosmic time galaxies are more efficient at forming stars. For low-mass star-forming galaxies, the SFRD as a function of…
The interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies is multiphase and cloudy, with stars forming in the very dense, cold gas found in Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs). Simulating the evolution of an entire galaxy, however, is a computational problem…
Star formation takes place in the dense gas phase, and therefore a simple dense gas and star formation rate relation has been proposed. With the advent of multi-beam receivers, new observations show that the deviation from linear relations…
We compare atomic gas, molecular gas, and the recent star formation rate (SFR) inferred from H-alpha in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). By using infrared dust emission and local dust-to-gas ratios, we construct a map of molecular gas that…
Dense, star-forming gas is believed to form at the stagnation points of large-scale ISM flows, but observational examples of this process in action are rare. We here present a giant molecular cloud (GMC) sandwiched between two colliding…
Observations of external galaxies and of local star-forming clouds in the Milky Way have suggested a variety of star formation laws, i.e., simple direct relations between the column density of star formation (Sigma_SFR: the amount of gas…
The current generation of galaxy simulations can resolve individual giant molecular clouds, the progenitors of dense star clusters. But the evolutionary fate of these young massive clusters, and whether they can become the old globular…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are recently formed astronomical objects with unusually high star formation rates. We propose the collision of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) as a likely formation mechanism of YMCs, consistent with the YMC…
(Abridged) We present a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between star formation rate surface density (SFR SD) and gas surface density (gas SD) at sub-kpc resolution in a sample of 18 nearby galaxies. We use high resolution HI data…
The Milky Way has been described as an anaemic spiral, but is its star formation rate (SFR) unusually low when compared to its peers? To answer this question, we define a sample of Milky Way Analogues (MWAs) based on stringent cuts on the…
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…
Whilst the star formation rate (SFR) of molecular clouds and galaxies is key in understanding galaxy evolution, the physical processes which determine the SFR remain unclear. This uncertainty about the underlying physics has resulted in…
We resolve 182 individual giant molecular clouds (GMCs) larger than 2.5 $\times$ 10$^{5}$ \Msun in the inner disks of five large nearby spiral galaxies (NGC 2403, NGC 3031, NGC 4736, NGC 4826, and NGC 6946) to create the largest such sample…
The scaling relations and the star formation laws for molecular cloud complexes in the Milky Way is investigated. We compare their masses $M_{\rm gas}$, mass surface densities $\Sigma_{M_{\rm gas}}$, radii $R$, velocity dispersions…
We compare the structure of molecular gas at $40$ pc resolution to the ability of gas to form stars across the disk of the spiral galaxy M51. We break the PAWS survey into $370$ pc and $1.1$ kpc resolution elements, and within each we…
The dust grain size distribution (GSD) likely varies significantly across star-forming environments in the Universe, but its impact on star formation remains unclear. This ambiguity arises because the GSD interacts non-linearly with…