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Related papers: Star formation in evolving molecular clouds

200 papers

Star formation is inefficient. Recent advances in numerical simulations and theoretical models of molecular clouds show that the combined effects of interstellar turbulence, magnetic fields and stellar feedback can explain the low…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2020-02-12 Christoph Federrath

We study the formation and evolution of several molecules in a collapsing interstellar cloud using a reasonably large reaction network containing more then four hundred atomic and molecular species. We employ a time dependent, spherically…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-30 Ankan Das , Sandip Kumar Chakrabarti , Kinsuk Acharyya , Sonali Chakrabarti

Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Ian A. Bonnell , Matthew R. Bate , Stephen G. Vine

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-04-12 Mercedes Mollá , Ángeles I. Díaz , Yago Ascasibar , Brad K. Gibson

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…

Developing a theory of low-mass star formation ($\sim 0.1$ to 3~M$_{\odot}$) remains one of the most elusive and important goals of theoretical astrophysics. The star-formation process is the outcome of the complex dynamics of interstellar…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Richard I. Klein , Shu-ichiro Inutsuka , Paolo Padoan , Kohji Tomisaka

Stars and star clusters 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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-30 Ralf S. Klessen

In star forming regions, we can observe different evolutionary stages of various objects and phenomena such as molecular clouds, protostellar jets and outflows, circumstellar disks, and protostars. However, it is difficult to directly…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-19 Masahiro N. Machida

Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Ralf Klessen

We review the progress that has been made in observing and analyzing molecular cloud structure in recent years. Structures are self-similar over a wide range of scales with similar power law indices independent of the star forming nature of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Jonathan P. Williams , Leo Blitz , Christopher F. McKee

The cloud-scale physics of star formation and feedback represent the main uncertainty in galaxy formation studies. Progress is hampered by the limited empirical constraints outside the restricted environment of the Local Group. In…

Stellar clusters are critical constituents within galaxies: they are the result of highest-density star formation, and through their spatially and temporally correlated feedback they regulate their host galaxy evolution. We present a novel…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-08-12 Marta Reina-Campos , Oleg Y. Gnedin , Alison Sills , Hui Li

Understanding how stars form, evolve and impact molecular clouds is key to understanding why star formation is such an inefficient process globally. In this paper, we use the infrared bright fraction, $f_\text{IRB}$ (the fraction of a given…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-12 E. J. Watkins , N. Peretto , A. J. Rigby , R. J. Smith , K. Kreckel , G. A. Fuller

Open and globular star clusters have served as benchmarks for the study of stellar evolution due to their supposed nature as simple stellar populations of the same age and metallicity. After a brief review of some of the pioneering work…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-14 Jason S. Kalirai , Harvey B. Richer

Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-09-11 Mark R. Krumholz , Christopher F. McKee , Joss Bland-Hawthorn

Energetic feedback from star clusters plays a pivotal role in shaping the dynamical evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To study the effects of stellar feedback on the star formation efficiency of the clouds and the dynamical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-05-29 Hui Li , Mark Vogelsberger , Federico Marinacci , Oleg Y. Gnedin

We use magnetohydrodynamical simulations of converging warm neutral medium flows to analyse the formation and global evolution of magnetised and turbulent molecular clouds subject to supernova feedback from massive stars. We show that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-04-27 Bastian Körtgen , Daniel Seifried , Robi Banerjee , Enrique Vázquez-Semadeni , Manuel Zamora-Avilés

We present a large suite of MHD simulations of turbulent, star-forming giant molecular clouds(GMCs) with stellar feedback, extending previous work by simulating 10 different random realizations for each point in the parameter space of cloud…

Much of what we know about molecular clouds, and by extension star formation, comes from molecular line observations. Interpreting these correctly requires knowledge of the underlying molecular abundances. Simulations of molecular clouds…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-08-02 F. D. Priestley , P. C. Clark , S. C. O. Glover , S. E. Ragan , O. Fehér , L. R. Prole , R. S. Klessen

Star formation is inefficient. Only a few percent of the available gas in molecular clouds forms stars, leading to the observed low star formation rate (SFR). The same holds when averaged over many molecular clouds, such that the SFR of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-06-13 Christoph Federrath