Related papers: Making massive stars in the Galactic Centre via ac…
The first stars formed over five orders of magnitude in mass by accretion in primordial dark matter halos. We study the evolution of massive, very massive and supermassive primordial (Pop III) stars over nine orders of magnitude in…
In this contribution we review our recent numerical work discussing the essential role of the local cluster environment in assembling massive stars. First we show that massive stars are formed from low mass pre-stellar cores and become…
Massive stars likely form by accretion and the evolutionary track of an accreting forming star corresponds to what is called the birthline in the HR diagram. The shape of this birthline is quite sensitive to the evolution of the entropy in…
Observations of massive stars within the central parsec of the Galaxy show that, while most stars orbit within a well-defined disc, a significant fraction have large eccentricities and / or inclinations with respect to the disc plane. Here,…
We consider a scenario where supermassive black holes form through direct accumulation of gas at the centre of proto-galaxies. In the first stage, the accumulated gas forms a super-massive star whose core collapses when the nuclear fuel is…
We perform high resolution direct $N$-body simulations to study the effect of an accretion disc on stellar dynamics in an active galactic nucleus (AGN). We show that the interaction of the nuclear stellar cluster (NSC) with the gaseous disc…
Supermassive stars, with masses greater than a million solar masses, are possible progenitors of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. Because of their short nuclear burning timescales, such objects can be formed only when matter is…
Over the last 15 years, around a hundred very young stars have been observed in the central parsec of our Galaxy. While the presence of young stars forming one or two stellar disks at approx. 0.1 pc from the supermassive black hole (SMBH)…
The first stars in the universe, forming at redshifts z>15 in minihalos with masses of order 10^6 Msun, may leave behind black holes as their remnants. These objects could conceivably serve as "seeds" for much larger black holes observed at…
There is overwhelming evidence that the Milky Way has formed its stars at a rel- atively constant rate throughout the Hubble time. This implies that its stock of cold gas was not in place since the beginning but it has been acquired slowly…
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 supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Center is surrounded by a parsec-scale star cluster, which contains a number of early type stars. The presence of such stars has been called a "paradox of youth" as star formation in the…
We use direct N-body simulations of gas embedded star clusters to study the importance of stellar collisions for the formation and mass accretion history of high-mass stars. Our clusters start in virial equilibrium as a mix of gas and…
The universe's largest galaxies reside at the centers of galaxy clusters and are embedded in hot gas that, if left unchecked, would cool prodigiously and create many more new stars than are actually observed. Cooling can be regulated by…
Super-massive black holes, with masses larger than a million times that of the Sun, appear to inhabit the centers of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically-motivated theories of galaxy formation need feedback from these super-massive black…
Supermassive black hole accretion and star formation appear intimately connected. I review the observational and theoretical evidence for this statement. I then discuss how focussed studies of two systems, our Galactic Center and the…
Neutron stars inspiralling into a stellar envelope can accrete at rates vastly exceeding the Eddington limit if the flow develops pressures high enough to allow neutrinos to radiate the released gravitational energy. It has been suggested…
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…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
We calculate numerically the collapse of slowly rotating, non-magnetic, massive molecular clumps, which conceivably could lead to the formation of massive stars. Because radiative acceleration on dust grains plays a critical role in the…