Related papers: No preferential spatial distribution for massive s…
We summarize some of the results obtained from Herschel surveys of the nearby star forming regions and the Galactic plane. We show that in the nearby star forming regions the starless core spatial surface density distribution is very…
We investigate the means by which cold gas can accrete onto Milky Way mass galaxies from a hot corona of gas, using a new smoothed particle hydrodynamics code, 'SPHS'. We find that the 'cold clumps' seen in many classic SPH simulations in…
During their evolution, star clusters undergo mass segregation, by which the orbits of the most massive stars shrink, while the lighter stars move outwards from the cluster centre. In this context, recent observations and dynamical…
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…
We describe results from large numbers of $N$-body simulations containing from $250$ to $1000$ stars each. The distribution of stellar masses is a power law, and the systems are isolated. While the collapse of the core exhibits the expected…
Merging systems at low redshift provide the unique opportunity to study the processes related to star formation in a variety of environments that presumably resemble those seen at higher redshifts. Previous studies of distant starbursting…
We report on a study of young star cluster complexes in the spiral galaxy M51. Recent studies have confirmed that star clusters do not form in isolation, but instead tend to form in larger groupings or complexes. We use {\it HST} broad and…
Young massive clusters are as young as open clusters but more massive and compact compared with typical open clusters. The formation process of young massive clusters is still unclear, and it is an open question whether the formation…
The majority of massive stars reside in binary systems, which are expected to experience mass transfer during their evolution. However, so far the conditions under which mass transfer leads to a common envelope, and thus possibly to a…
We propose a scenario in which massive stars form in a self-gravitating gaseous disc around a supermassive black hole. We find that once the surface density of the disc exceeds a critical value, the disc fragments into dense clumps. The…
Supermassive stars (SMSs) are candidate progenitors of massive black hole seeds and may contribute to anomalous abundance patterns in high-redshift galaxies and globular clusters. Recent radiation-hydrodynamic simulations indicate that SMSs…
It has been known for more than 30 years that star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is slow, in the sense that only ~1% of the gas forms stars every free-fall time. This result is entirely independent of any particular model of…
Stars form in regions of very inhomogeneous densities and may have chaotic orbital motions. This leads to a time variation of the accretion rate, which will spread the masses over some mass range. We investigate the mass distribution…
We describe the first three-dimensional simulation of the gravitational collapse of a massive, rotating molecular cloud that includes heating by both non-ionizing and ionizing radiation. We find that as the first protostars gain sufficient…
Using our recently improved understanding of star cluster physics, we are now within reach of answering a number of fundamental questions in contemporary astrophysics. Star cluster physics has immediate bearing on questions ranging from the…
The formation of the most massive quasars observed at high redshifts requires extreme inflows of gas down to the length scales of the central compact object. Here, we estimate the maximum inflow rate allowed by gravity down to the surface…
A model of core-clump accretion with equally likely stopping describes star formation in the dense parts of clusters, where models of isolated collapsing cores may not apply. Each core accretes at a constant rate onto its protostar, while…
The dense, clustered environment in which massive stars form can lead to interactions with neighboring stars. It has been hypothesized that collisions and mergers may contribute to the growth of the most massive stars. In this paper we…
We revisit the problem of low-mass pre-main-sequence (PMS) stellar evolution and its observational consequences for where stars fall on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD). In contrast to most previous work, our models follow stars as…
By performing three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations, we study the formation of young massive star clusters (YMCs, $M_{*}>10^4~M_{\odot}$) in clouds with the surface density ranging from $\Sigma_{\rm cl} = 80$ to…