Related papers: Compact dusty clouds and efficient H$_2$ formation…
We demonstrate that the high pressure of the hot intracluster medium (ICM) can trigger the collapse of molecular clouds in a spiral galaxy, leading to a burst of star formation in the clouds. Our hydrodynamical simulations show that the…
Molecular clouds are essentially made up of atomic and molecular hydrogen, which in spite of being the simplest molecule in the ISM plays a key role in the chemical evolution of molecular clouds. Since its formation time is very long, the…
Star formation in galaxies is regulated by the heating and cooling in the interstellar medium. In particular, the processing of molecular gas into stars will depend strongly on the ratio of gas heating to gas cooling in the neutral gas…
Atomic gas in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) is organized in filamentary structures. These structures usually host cold and dense molecular clumps. The Galactic magnetic field is considered to play an important role in the formation…
Molecular clouds, the birthplaces of stars in galaxies, form dynamically from the diffuse atomic gas of the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is also threaded by magnetic fields which have a large impact on its dynamics. In particular,…
{It has recently been proposed that giant molecular complexes form at the sites where streams of diffuse warm atomic gas collide at transonic velocities.} {We study the global statistics of molecular clouds formed by large scale colliding…
Context: Molecular hydrogen ($\rm{H_2}$) is crucial in galaxy formation and evolution, serving as the main fuel for star formation (SF). In metal-enriched environments, $\rm{H_2}$ primarily forms on interstellar dust grain surfaces.…
The wavelength dependences of interstellar extinction and polarization, supplemented by observed elemental abundances and the spectrum of infrared emission from dust heated by starlight, strongly constrain dust models. One dust model that…
Dust growth via accretion of gas species has been proposed as the dominant process to increase the amount of dust in galaxies. We show here that this hypothesis encounters severe difficulties that make it unfit to explain the observed UV…
The cycling of material from the interstellar medium (ISM) into stars and the return of stellar ejecta into the ISM is the engine that drives the "galactic ecology" in normal spirals, a cornerstone in the formation and evolution of galaxies…
We investigate how the existence of hydrogen molecules on grain surfaces may affect H$_2$ formation efficiency in diffuse and translucent clouds. Hydrogen molecules are able to reduce the desorption energy of H atoms on grain surfaces in…
ISOCAM allowed the observation of diffuse interstellar regions where the transition from atomic to molecular gas takes place. In this contribution we report on spectacular variations of small dust grains abundance in such regions observed…
We examine the triggering process of molecular cloud formation around diffuse HII regions. We calculate the time evolution of the shell as well as of the HII region in a two-phase neutral medium, solving the UV and FUV radiative transfer,…
We explore the constraints on globular cluster formation provided by the observed conditions in starbursts where globulars are currently forming, and by the observed properties of young and old globular clusters. We note that the pressure…
This paper reports on computational evidence for the formation of cloud-like dust structures around C-rich AGB stars. This spatio-temporal structure formation process is caused by a radiative/thermal instability of dust forming gases as…
Molecular gas is the key ingredient of the star formation cycle, and tracing its dependencies on other galaxy properties is essential for understanding galaxy evolution. In this work, we explore the relation between the different phases of…
(Abridged). In this paper, we present results from a large set of numerical simulations that demonstrate that H2 formation occurs rapidly in turbulent gas. Starting with purely atomic hydrogen, large quantities of molecular hydrogen can be…
We study the formation of molecular hydrogen on dust grain surfaces and apply our results to the high redshift universe. We find that a range of physical parameters, in particular dust temperature and gas temperature, but not so much dust…
The $\mathrm{H}_2$ formation on grains is known to be sensitive to dust temperature, which is also known to fluctuate for small grain sizes due to photon absorption. We aim at exploring the consequences of simultaneous fluctuations of the…
We have investigated the time scale for formation of molecular clouds by examining the conversion of HI to H2 using a time-dependent model. H2 formation on dust grains and cosmic ray and photo destruction are included in one-dimensional…