Related papers: Star formation rates and efficiencies in the Galac…
The clustered nature of star formation should produce a high degree of structure in the combined phase and chemical space in the Galactic disk. To date, observed structure of this kind has been mostly limited to bound clusters and moving…
Star formation is a multi-scale process that requires tracing cloud formation and stellar feedback within the local (<kpc) and global galaxy environment. We present first results from two large observing programs on ALMA and VLT/MUSE,…
We study the dynamical evolution of stars and gas close to the centre of the Milky Way. Any plausible means of forming the young stars observed at the Galactic Centre leaves behind a residual gas disc at ~0.01pc radii. We show that the…
I assess the similarities and differences between the star-formation modes in quiescent spiral galaxies versus those in violent starburst regions. As opposed to the quiescent star-formation mode in spiral galaxies, current empirical…
The formation of stars from gas drives the evolution of galaxies. Yet, it remains one of the hardest processes to understand when trying to connect observations of stellar and galaxy populations to models of large scale structure formation.…
A chromospheric age distribution of 552 late-type dwarfs is transformed into a star formation history by the application of scale height corrections, stellar evolutionary corrections and volume corrections. We show that the disk of our…
The observed discrete multiple stellar populations and internal abundance spreads in r- and s-process elements within globular clusters (GCs) have been suggested to be explained self-consistently by discrete star formation events over a…
We investigate the formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in a Milky-Way-like disk galaxy with a flat rotation curve. We perform a series of 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations that follow both the…
All stars are born in molecular clouds, and most in giant molecular clouds (GMCs), which thus set the star formation activity of galaxies. We first review their observed properties, including measures of mass surface density, Sigma, and…
Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are the primary reservoirs of cold, star-forming molecular gas in the Milky Way and similar galaxies, and thus any understanding of star formation must encompass a model for GMC formation, evolution, and…
Observations of both star-forming regions and young, gas-free stellar associations indicate that most nearby molecular clouds form stars only over a short time span before dispersal; large-scale flows in the diffuse interstellar medium have…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
In this chapter, we will cover how stars form from the stellar nurseries that are giant molecular clouds. We will first review the physical processes that compete to regulate star formation. We then review star formation in turbulent,…
How stars are born from clouds of gas is a rich physics problem whose solution will inform our understanding of not just stars but also planets, galaxies, and the universe itself. Star formation is stupendously inefficient. Take the Milky…
In the Milky Way and other main-sequence galaxies, stars form exclusively in molecular gas, which is traced by CO emission. However, low metallicity dwarf galaxies are often `CO-dark' in the sense that CO emission is not observable even at…
We derive an analytic prediction for the star formation rate in environments ranging from normal galactic disks to starbursts and ULIRGs in terms of the observables of those systems. Our calculation is based on three premises: (1) star…
Large-scale star formation in disk galaxies is hypothesized to be driven by global gravitational instability. The observed gas surface density is commonly used to compute the strength of gravitational instability, but according to this…
Recent observations have demonstrated a significant growth in the integrated stellar mass of the red sequence since z=1, dominated by a steadily increasing number of galaxies with stellar masses M* < 10^11 M_sun. In this paper, we use the…
We examine how the atomic and molecular gas components of galaxies evolve to higher redshifts using the semi-analytic galaxy formation models of Fu et al. (2010) in which we track the surface density profiles of gas in disks. We adopt two…
Gas processes affecting star formation are reviewed with an emphasis on gravitational and magnetic instabilities as a source of turbulence. Gravitational instabilities are pervasive in a multi-phase medium, even for sub-threshold column…