Related papers: Fast Molecular Cloud Destruction Requires Fast Clo…
The relations between star formation and properties of molecular clouds are studied based on a sample of star forming regions in the Galactic Plane. Sources were selected by having radio recombination lines to provide identification of…
Understanding the star formation process is central to much of modern astrophysics. For several decades it has been thought that stellar birth is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity and magnetostatic support, modulated by…
Star formation is one of the least understood processes in cosmic evolution. It is difficult to formulate a general theory for star formation in part because of the wide range of physical processes involved. The interstellar gas out of…
Star formation in galaxies is a complex phenomenon occurring on a very wide range of scales, and molecular clouds are at the heart of this process. The formation of these structures and the subsequent collapse of the gas within them to form…
Star-forming regions presenting a density gradient experience a higher star formation rate than if they were of uniform density. We refer to the ratio between the star formation rate of a spherical centrally-concentrated gas clump and the…
We discuss the dependence of various properties of the star formation rate (SFR) and efficiency (SFE) in molecular clouds (MCs) on the maximum mass reached by the clouds, based on a previously-published model for MC and SFR evolution in…
Observation shows that nebular emission, molecular gas, and young stars in giant galaxies are associated with rising X-ray bubbles inflated by radio jets launched from nuclear black holes. We propose a model where molecular clouds condense…
The central molecular zone (CMZ) hosts some of the most massive and dense molecular clouds and star clusters in the Galaxy, offering an important window into star formation under extreme conditions. Star formation in this extreme…
Molecular clouds (MC) are the densest and coldest component of the interstellar gas, and the sites of star formation. They are also turbulent and fractal and their masses and sizes span several orders of magnitude. It is also generally…
Different from Milky-Way-like galaxies, discs of gas-rich galaxies are clumpy. It is believed that the clumps form because of gravitational instability. However, a necessary condition for gravitational instability to develop is that the…
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…
The star formation efficiency (SFE) measures the proportion of molecular gas converted into stars, while the star formation rate (SFR) indicates the rate at which gas is transformed into stars. Here we propose such a model in the framework…
We discuss star formation in the turbulent interstellar medium. We argue that morphological appearance and dynamical evolution of the gas is primarily determined by supersonic turbulence, and that stars form via a process we call…
In our grid of multiphase chemical evolution models (Moll\'a & D\'iaz, 2005), star formation in the disk occurs in two steps: first, molecular gas forms, and then stars are created by cloud-cloud collisions or interactions of massive stars…
To investigate how molecular clouds react to different environmental conditions at a galactic scale, we present a catalogue of giant molecular clouds resolved down to masses of $\sim 10$~M$_{\odot}$ from a simulation of the entire disc of…
The inner few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way harbours gas densities, pressures, velocity dispersions, an interstellar radiation field and a cosmic ray ionisation rate orders of magnitude higher than the disc; akin to the environment found…
Molecular hydrogen (H$_2$) formation and dissociation are key processes that drive the gas lifecycle in galaxies. Using the SImulating the LifeCycle of Molecular Clouds (SILCC) zoom-in simulation suite, we explore the utility of future…
We investigate the structure of galaxies formed in a suite of high-resolution cosmological simulations. Consistent with observations of high-redshift galaxies, our simulated galaxies show irregular, prolate shapes, which are dominated by…
[abridged] While observations of Local Group galaxies show a very simple, local star formation law in which the star formation rate per unit area in each patch of a galaxy scales linearly with the molecular gas surface density, recent…
We investigate the triggering of star formation in clouds that form in Galactic scale flows as the ISM passes through spiral shocks. We use the Lagrangian nature of SPH simulations to trace how the star forming gas is gathered into…