Related papers: The Single-Cloud Star Formation Relation
We explore various instability models for the onset of star formation in irregular galaxies. Critical gas densities are calculated for gravitational instabilities with a thin, pure-gas disk, and with a thick disk composed of gas and a…
The cloud-scale density, velocity dispersion, and gravitational boundedness of the interstellar medium (ISM) vary within and among galaxies. In turbulent models, these properties play key roles in the ability of gas to form stars. New high…
We investigate the properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) at ~100 pc scales in a sample of 27 nearby luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) spanning the entire merger sequence. In particular, we study the relations between star-formation…
Over the past decade increasingly robust estimates of the dense molecular gas content in galaxy populations between redshift 0 and the peak of cosmic galaxy/star formation from redshift 1-3 have become available. This rapid progress has…
We investigate how the properties of Galactic giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and their denser substructures (clumps) correlate with the local star formation rate. We trace clouds using the $^{12}$CO(3-2) transition, as observed by the CO…
We present radiation-magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of star formation in self-gravitating, turbulent molecular clouds, modeling the formation of individual massive stars, including their UV radiation feedback. The set of simulations have…
We show how the existence of a relation between the star formation rate and the gas density, i.e. the Kennicutt-Schmidt law, implies a continuous accretion of fresh gas from the environment into the discs of spiral galaxies. We present a…
Star formation on galactic scales is known to be a slow process, but whether it is slow on smaller scales is uncertain. We cross-correlate 5469 giant molecular clouds (GMCs) from a new all-sky catalog with 256 star forming complexes (SFCs)…
Star formation (SF) laws are fundamental relations between the gas content of a galaxy and its star formation rate (SFR) and play key roles in galaxy evolution models. In this paper, we present new empirical SF laws of disc galaxies based…
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…
We investigate the relationship between HI, H_2, and the star formation rate (SFR) using azimuthally averaged data for seven CO-bright spiral galaxies. Contrary to some earlier studies based on global fluxes, we find that the SFR surface…
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…
We invoke star formation triggered by cloud-cloud collisions to explain global star formation rates of disk galaxies and circumnuclear starbursts. Previous theories based on the growth rate of gravitational perturbations ignore the…
One of the most puzzling properties of observed galaxies is the universality of the empirical correlation between the star formation rate and average gas surface density on kiloparsec scales (the Schmidt law). In this study I present…
We investigate star formation at very early evolutionary phases in five massive clouds in the inner 500 pc of the Galaxy, the Central Molecular Zone. Using interferometer observations of H$_2$O masers and ultra-compact H II regions, we find…
We derive a physical model for the observed relations between star formation rate (SFR) and molecular line (CO and HCN) emission in galaxies, and show how these observed relations are reflective of the underlying star formation law. We do…
(Abridged) We present a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between star formation rate surface density (SFR SD) and gas surface density (gas SD) at sub-kpc resolution in a sample of 18 nearby galaxies. We use high resolution HI data…
Recent studies of the nearest star-forming clouds of the Galaxy at submillimeter wavelengths with the Herschel Space Observatory have provided us with unprecedented images of the initial and boundary conditions of the star formation…
Direct comparisons between galaxy simulations and observations that both reach scales < 100 pc are strong tools to investigate the cloud-scale physics of star formation and feedback in nearby galaxies. Here we carry out such a comparison…
A positive power-law trend between the local surface densities of molecular gas, $\Sigma_{gas}$, and young stellar objects, $\Sigma_{\star}$, in molecular clouds of the Solar Neighbourhood has been identified by Gutermuth et al. How it…