Related papers: How Galactic Environment affects the Dynamical Sta…
Supersonic turbulence plays a pivotal role during the formation of molecular clouds and stars in galaxies. However, little is known about how the fraction of compressive and solenoidal modes in the velocity field evolves over time and how…
We investigate how the removal of interstellar material by stellar feedback limits the efficiency of star formation in molecular clouds and how this determines the shape of the mass function of young star clusters. In particular, we derive…
We present a study of the spectroscopic and photometric properties of galaxies in six nearby clusters. We perform a partial correlation analysis on our dataset to investigate whether the correlation between star formation rates in galaxies…
We study giant molecular cloud (GMC) collisions and their ability to trigger star cluster formation. We further develop our three dimensional magnetized, turbulent, colliding GMC simulations by implementing star formation sub-grid models.…
In Meidt et al. (2018), we showed that gas kinematics on the scale of individual molecular clouds are not dominated by self-gravity but also track a component that originates with orbital motion in the potential of the host galaxy. This…
The fragmentation of gas to form stars in molecular clouds is intrinsically linked to the turbulence within them. These internal motions are set at the birth of the cloud and may vary with galactic environment and as the cloud evolves. In…
Context: Star clusters form within giant molecular clouds that are strongly altered by the feedback action of the massive stars, but the cluster still remains embedded in a dense, highly turbulent medium and interactions with ambient…
Observations of molecular clouds in metal-poor environments typically find that they have much higher star formation rates than one would expect based on their observed CO luminosities and the molecular gas masses that are inferred from…
We have used a sample of 15749 galaxies taken from the Las Campanas Redshift Survey to investigate the effects of environment on the rate of star formation (SFR) in galaxies. The size and homogeneity of this data set allows us to sample,…
The discovery of young globular clusters in merging galaxies and other environments provides an opportunity to study directly the process of globular cluster formation. Empirically it appears that globular cluster formation occurs…
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…
We consider the relationship between molecular-gas and star-formation surface densities in 19 morphologically defined E/S0s with stellar mass <~ 4x10^10 M_sun, paying particular attention to those found on the blue sequence in color vs.…
We use a suite of 3D simulations of star-forming molecular clouds, with and without stellar feedback, magnetic fields, and driven turbulence, to study the compression and expansion rates of the gas as functions of density. We show that,…
Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are well-studied in the local Universe, however, exactly how their properties vary during galaxy evolution is poorly understood due to challenging resolution requirements, both observational and computational.…
We present semi-analytic dynamical models for giant molecular clouds evolving under the influence of HII regions launched by newborn star clusters. In contrast to previous work, we neither assume that clouds are in virial or energetic…
We investigate the formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in a Milky-Way-like disk galaxy with a flat rotation curve. We perform a series of 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations that follow both the…
We develop a simple analytical criterion to investigate the role of the environment on the onset of star formation. We will consider the main external agents that influence the star formation (i.e. ram pressure, tidal interaction,…
Stars form from molecular gas under complex conditions influenced by multiple competing physical mechanisms, such as gravity, turbulence, and magnetic fields. However, accurately identifying the fraction of gas actively involved in star…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
The kinematics of newly-formed star clusters are interesting both as a probe of the state of the gas clouds from which the stars form, and because they influence planet formation, stellar mass segregation, cluster disruption, and other…