Related papers: Reconstructing three-dimensional densities from tw…
To date, most numerical simulations of molecular clouds, and star formation within them, assume a uniform density sphere or box with an imposed turbulent velocity field. In this work, we select molecular clouds from galactic scale…
Star formation remains an unsolved problem in astrophysics. Numerical studies of large-scale structure simulations cannot resolve the whole process and their approach usually assumes that only gas denser than a typical threshold can host…
The processes regulating star formation in galaxies are thought to act across a hierarchy of spatial scales. To connect extragalactic star formation relations from global and kpc-scale measurements to recent cloud-scale resolution studies,…
In a new simple model I reconcile two contradictory views on the factors that determine the rate at which molecular clouds form stars -- internal structure vs. external, environmental influences -- providing a unified picture for the…
The earliest evolution of star clusters involves a phase of co-existence of both newly-formed stars, and the gas from which they are forming. Observations of the gas in such regions provide a wealth of data that can inform the simulations…
Our understanding of how molecular clouds form in the interstellar medium (ISM) would be greatly helped if we had a reliable observational tracer of the gas flows responsible for forming the clouds. Fine structure emission from singly…
We study the relation between molecular gas and star formation in a volume-limited sample of 222 galaxies from the COLD GASS survey, with measurements of the CO(1-0) line from the IRAM 30m telescope. The galaxies are at redshifts…
Star formation in galaxies is a complex phenomenon occurring on a very wide range of scales, and molecular clouds are at the heart of this process. The formation of these structures and the subsequent collapse of the gas within them to form…
Knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of Galactic molecular clouds is important for understanding how clouds are affected by processes such as turbulence and magnetic fields and how this structure effects star formation within them.…
We have used a numerical simulation of a turbulent cloud to synthesize maps of the thermal emission from dust at a variety of far-IR and sub-mm wavelengths. The average column density and external radiation field in the simulation is well…
To constrain for the first time the mean mass and extent of the molecular gas of a mass-complete sample of $>10^{10}$M$_{\odot}$ main-sequence (MS) galaxies at $0.4<z<3.6$. We apply an innovative $uv$-based stacking analysis to a large set…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
The formation of star clusters involves the growth of smaller, gas-rich subclusters through accretion of gas from the giant molecular cloud within which the subclusters are embedded. The two main accretion mechanisms responsible for this…
Most stars are formed as star clusters in galaxies, which then disperse into galactic disks. Upcoming exascale supercomputational facilities will enable performing simulations of galaxies and their formation by resolving individual stars…
Recent observations of the nearby Galactic molecular clouds indicate that the dense gas in molecular clouds have quasi-universal properties on star formation, and observational studies of extra galaxies have shown a galactic-scale…
We aim at understanding the massive star formation (MSF) limit $m(r) = 870 M_{\odot} (r/pc)^{1.33}$ in the mass-size space of molecular structures recently proposed by Kauffmann & Pillai (2010). As a first step, we build on the hypothesis…
Star formation activity in molecular clouds is often found to be correlated with the amount of material above a column density threshold of $\sim 10^{22} \, {\rm cm^{-2}}$. Attempts to connect this column density threshold to a ${\it…
Molecular clouds often exhibit filamentary or sheet-like shapes. We compute the free-fall time ($\tff$) for finite, uniform, self-gravitating circular sheets and filamentary clouds of small but finite thickness, so that their volume density…
We present a method to estimate the total gas column density, dust-to-gas and dust-to-metal ratios of distant galaxies from rest-frame optical spectra. The technique exploits the sensitivity of certain optical lines to changes in depletion…
We use deep far-infrared data from the PEP/GOODS-Herschel surveys and rest frame ultraviolet photometry to study the evolution of the molecular gas mass function of normal star forming galaxies. Computing the molecular gas mass, M(mol), by…