Related papers: Star formation quenching in massive galaxies
Galaxy interactions and mergers play a significant, but still debated and poorly understood role in the star formation history of galaxies. Numerical and theoretical models cannot yet explain the main properties of merger-induced…
Most if not all stars form in star clusters. Thus the distribution of star clusters preserves the information on the star formation history of a galaxy. Massive clusters form only during episodes of high star formation activity whereas…
This article will briefly review the theory of star formation (SF) and its development using observations. This is very relevant in the present context since planet formation appears to be a byproduct of SF, and the whole question of life…
In this review, I present the case for how massive stars may form through stellar collisions. This mechanism requires very high stellar densities, up to 4 orders of magnitude higher than are observed in the cores of dense young clusters. In…
Young open clusters are our laboratories for studying high-mass star formation and evolution. Unfortunately, the information that they provide is difficult to interpret, and sometimes contradictory. In this contribution, I present a few…
How do stars manage to form within low-density, HI-dominated gas? Such environments provide a laboratory for studying star formation with physical conditions distinct from starbursts and the metal-rich disks of spiral galaxies where most…
Star formation occurs in hierarchical patterns in both space and time. Galaxies form large regions on the scale of the interstellar Jeans length and these large regions apparently fragment into giant molecular clouds and cloud cores in a…
Massive stars (with mass m_* > 8 solar masses) are fundamental to the evolution of galaxies, because they produce heavy elements, inject energy into the interstellar medium, and possibly regulate the star formation rate. The individual star…
The history of galaxy formation via star formation and stellar mass assembly rates is now known with some certainty, yet the connection between high redshift and low redshift galaxy populations is not yet clear. By identifying and studying…
Star formation rate and accummulated stellar mass are two fundamental physical quantities that describe the evolutionary state of a forming galaxy. Two recent attempts to determine the relationship between these quantities, by interpreting…
There has been remarkable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies of galaxy formation and evolution. Largely due to a combination of deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging, Keck spectroscopy, and COBE far-IR background…
Stars are forming in our galaxy at a rate of between 1 and 4 solar masses of stars per year. In contrast to elliptical galaxies, which are largely devoid of star formation, star formation is still going on in spiral galaxies because of…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
Properties of normal galactic star formation, including the density dependence, threshold density, turbulent scaling relations, and clustering properties, are applied to the formation of galactic bulges. One important difference is that the…
Understanding galaxy formation is one of the most pressing issues in cosmology. We review the current status of galaxy formation from both an observational and a theoretical perspective, and summarise the prospects for future advances.
The major questions relevant to star and planet formation are: What controls the rate, efficiency, spatial clustering, multiplicity, and initial mass function of star formation, now and in the past? What are the major feedback mechanisms…
As star-forming galaxies approach or exceed a stellar mass around $10^{11} M_\odot$, they are increasingly likely to be quenched in a process generically called mass quenching. Central galaxies, which are quenched via mass rather than…
The nature of the first generation of stars in the Universe remains largely unknown. Observations imply the existence of massive primordial stars early in the history of the universe, and the standard theory for the growth of cosmic…
We point out a natural mechanism for quenching of star formation in early-type galaxies. It automatically links the color of a galaxy with its morphology and does not require gas consumption, removal or termination of gas supply. Given that…
The dependence of star formation rate on galaxian environment is a key issue in the understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. However, the study of this subject is complex and observationally challenging. This paper reviews some of…