Related papers: Reconstructing three-dimensional densities from tw…
In this paper we investigate the level of star formation activity within nearby molecular clouds. We employ a uniform set of infrared extinction maps to provide accurate assessments of cloud mass and structure and compare these with…
We leverage the 1 pc spatial resolution of the Leike et al. 2020 3D dust map to characterize the three-dimensional structure of nearby molecular clouds ($d \lesssim 400$ pc). We start by "skeletonizing" the clouds in 3D volume density space…
We investigate how the dynamical state of molecular clouds relates to host galaxy environment, and how this impacts the star formation efficiency in the Milky Way and seven nearby galaxies. We compile measurements of molecular cloud and…
We explore the relation between the stellar mass surface density and the mass surface density of molecular hydrogen gas in twelve nearby molecular clouds that are located at $<$1.5 kpc distance. The sample clouds span an order of magnitude…
We present a numerical study of the evolution of molecular clouds, from their formation by converging flows in the warm ISM, to their destruction by the ionizing feedback of the massive stars they form. We improve with respect to our…
Recent observational results indicate that the functional shape of the spatially-resolved star formation-molecular gas density relation depends on the spatial scale considered. These results may indicate a fundamental role of sampling…
We examine the physical parameters that affect the accumulation of gas in molecular clouds to high column densities where the formation of stars takes place. In particular, we analyze the dense gas mass fraction (DGMF) in a set of…
One of the most important and well-established empirical results in astronomy is the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation between the density of interstellar gas and the rate at which that gas forms stars. A tight correlation between these…
We apply gravity-based and density-based methods to identify clouds in numerical simulations of the star-forming, three-phase interstellar medium (ISM), and compare their properties and their global correlation with the star formation rate…
We investigate the origin of observed local star formation relations using radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations with self-consistent star formation and ionising radiation. We compare these clouds to the density distributions of local…
We describe an overall picture of galactic-scale star formation. Recent high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of two-fluid dynamics with cooling/heating and thermal conduction have shown that the formation of molecular clouds…
We study the formation of giant dense cloud complexes and of stars within them by means of SPH numerical simulations of the mildly supersonic collision of gas streams (``inflows'') in the warm neutral medium (WNM). The resulting…
New extragalactic measurements of the cloud population-averaged star formation (SF) efficiency per freefall time $\rm\epsilon_{\rm ff}$ from PHANGS show little sign of theoretically predicted dependencies on cloud-scale virial level or…
[abridged] While observations of Local Group galaxies show a very simple, local star formation law in which the star formation rate per unit area in each patch of a galaxy scales linearly with the molecular gas surface density, recent…
Using observed GALEX far-ultraviolet (FUV) fluxes and VLA images of the 21-cm HI column densities, along with estimates of the local dust abundances, we measure the volume densities of a sample of actively star-forming giant molecular…
We present a new observational method to evaluate the star formation law as formulated by Schmidt: the power-law expression assumed to relate the rate of star formation in a volume of space to the local total gas volume density. Volume…
We present a new model to describe the star formation process in galaxies, which includes the description of the different gas phases -- molecular, atomic, and ionized -- together with its metal content. The model, which will be coupled to…
Stars in galaxies form in giant molecular clouds that coalesce when the atomic hydrogen is converted into molecules. There are currently two dominant models for what property of the galactic disk determines its molecular fraction: either…
We test some ideas for star formation relations against data on local molecular clouds. On a cloud by cloud basis, the relation between the surface density of star formation rate and surface density of gas divided by a free-fall time,…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…