Related papers: The Evolution of the Star-forming Interstellar Med…
Observations of the interstellar medium are key to deciphering the physical processes regulating star formation in galaxies. However, observational uncertainties and detection limits can bias the interpretation unless carefully modeled.…
Star formation occurs within dense regions of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), however, exactly how gas collects and evolves to form individual stars and what role dense cores play remains unclear. We use the Lagrangian cell information in…
In order to understand galaxy evolution through cosmic times it is critical to derive the properties of the molecular gas content of galaxies, i.e. the material out of which stars ultimately form. The last decade has seen rapid progress in…
We review the evolution of the cosmic average molecular gas density to large look-back times, using observations of rotational transitions of CO. Molecular gas is the fuel for star formation in galaxies. Deep searches for CO emission from…
Over the last decade, observations of the cool interstellar medium in distant galaxies via molecular and atomic fine structure line emission has gone from a curious look into a few extreme, rare objects, to a mainstream tool to study galaxy…
We examine the cosmic star formation rate (SFR) and its dependence on galaxy stellar mass over the redshift range 0.8 < z < 2 using data from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS). The SFR in the most massive galaxies (M > 10^{10.8} M_sun) was…
One key piece of information missing from high redshift galaxy surveys is the galaxies' cold gas contents. We present a new method to indirectly determine cold gas surface densities and integrated gas masses from galaxy star formation rates…
In this review, I discuss some highlights of recent research on molecular gas in galaxies; large-scale CO maps of nearby galaxies are being made, which extend our knowledge on global properties, radial gradients, and spiral structure of the…
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…
In these lectures I review observations of star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies to develop a physical intuition for understanding star formation in the local and high-redshift Universe. A lot of this material is…
ALMA observations of the long wavelength dust continuum are used to estimate the gas masses in a sample of 708 star-forming (SF) galaxies at z = 0.3 to 4.5. We determine the dependence of gas masses and star formation efficiencies (SFE=SFR…
This paper discusses how cosmic gas accretion controls star formation, and summarizes the physical properties expected for the cosmic gas accreted by galaxies. The paper also collects observational evidence for gas accretion sustaining star…
It has been known for more than 30 years that star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is slow, in the sense that only ~1% of the gas forms stars every free-fall time. This result is entirely independent of any particular model of…
Recent observations with the IRAM instruments have allowed to explore the star formation efficiency in galaxies as a function of redshift, in detecting and mapping their molecular gas. Some galaxies stand on what is called the "main…
I will present recent theoretical results on the formation and the high redshift assembly of spheroids. These findings have been obtained by utilising different and complementary techniques: chemodynamical models offer great insight in the…
We use simple analytic reasoning to identify physical processes that drive the evolution of the cosmic star formation density in cold dark matter universes. Based on our analysis, we formulate a model to characterise the redshift dependence…
We conducted observations of 12CO(J=5-4) and dust thermal continuum emission toward twenty star-forming galaxies on the main sequence at z~1.4 using ALMA to investigate the properties of the interstellar medium. The sample galaxies are…
Star formation history shows a gradual decline since the last 8-9 Gyr (z=1). The bulk of present-day stellar mass and metal content was formed at redshifts lower than 2-3, which is consistent with a hierarchical scenario of galaxy…
We investigate the evolution of dust content in galaxies from redshifts z=0 to z=9.5. Using empirically motivated prescriptions, we model galactic-scale properties -- including halo mass, stellar mass, star formation rate, gas mass, and…
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…