Related papers: Perspectives on Low-Mass Star Formation
Structure of a quasi-stationary stellar cluster is modelled assuming that it is embedded in the gravitational field of a super-massive black hole. Gradual orbital decay of stellar trajectories is caused by the dissipative interaction with…
A long-standing problem in low-mass star formation is the "luminosity problem," whereby protostars are underluminous compared to the accretion luminosity expected both from theoretical collapse calculations and arguments based on the…
The formation mechanism of massive stars remains one of the main open problems in astrophysics, in particular the relationship between the mass of the most massive stars, and that of the cores in which they form. Numerical simulations of…
The interstellar medium of galaxies is composed of multiple phases, including molecular, atomic, and ionized gas, as well as dust. Stars are formed within this medium from cold molecular gas clouds, which collapse due to their gravitational…
Like their lower mass siblings, massive protostars can be expected to: a) be surrounded by circumstellar disks and b) launch magnetically-driven jets and outflows. The disk formation and global evolution is thereby controlled by advection…
Identifying the processes that determine strength, duration and variability of protostellar mass growth is a fundamental ingredient of any theory of star formation. I discuss protostellar mass accretion rates dM/dt from numerical models…
Stars form within molecular clouds but our understanding of this fundamental process remains hampered by the complexity of the physics that drives their evolution. We review our observational and theoretical knowledge of molecular clouds…
This article presents recent work to constrain the physical and chemical properties in high-mass star formation based largely on interferometric high-spatial-resolution continuum and spectral line studies at (sub)mm wavelengths. After…
Using a quantitative model for bipolar outflows driven by hydromagnetic protostellar winds, we calculate the efficiency of star formation assuming that available gas is either converted into stars or ejected in outflows. We estimate the…
The recent identification of one or two sub-parsec disks of young, massive stars orbiting the ~4e6 solar mass black hole Sgr A* has prompted an "in-situ" scenario for star formation in disks of gas formed from a cloud captured from the…
Molecular clouds are a fundamental ingredient of galaxies: they are the channels that transform the diffuse gas into stars. The detailed process of how they do it is not completely understood. We review the current knowledge of molecular…
(ABBREVIATED) Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. In this review the relation between interstellar turbulence and star formation is discussed. Supersonic turbulence can provide support…
A collision-induced magnetic reconnection (CMR) mechanism was recently proposed to explain the formation of a filament in the Orion A molecular cloud. In this mechanism, a collision between two clouds with antiparallel magnetic fields…
The observed increase in star formation efficiency with average cloud density, from several percent in whole giant molecular clouds to ~30 or more in cluster-forming cores, can be understood as the result of hierarchical cloud structure if…
Disc fragmentation provides an important mechanism for producing low mass stars in prestellar cores. Here, we describe Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations which show how populations of prestellar cores evolve into stars. We find the…
Competitive accretion, a process to explain the origin of the IMF, occurs when stars in a common gravitational potential accrete from a distributed gaseous component. We show that concerns recently raised on the efficiency of competitive…
Here we model a star forming factory in which the continuous creation of stars results in a highly concentrated, massive (globular cluster-like) stellar system. We show that under very general conditions a large-scale gravitational…
The current generation of millimeter interferometers have revealed a population of compact (r <~ 0.1 pc), massive (M ~ 100 Msun) gas cores that are the likely progenitors of massive stars. I review models for the evolution of these objects…
Observations indicate that dense molecular filamentary clouds are sites of star formation. The filament width determines the most unstable scale for self-gravitational fragmentation and influences the stellar mass. Therefore, constraining…
The collapse of massive molecular clumps can produce high mass stars, but the evolution is not simply a scaled-up version of low mass star formation. Outflows and radiative effects strongly hinder the formation of massive stars via…