Related papers: Star Formation in the Extreme Galactic Center Envi…
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…
The presence of young massive stars orbiting on eccentric rings within a few tenths of a parsec of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic centre is challenging for theories of star formation. The high tidal shear from the black hole…
Using studies of nearby star formation with Spitzer, I will argue that star formation is restricted to dense cores within molecular clouds. The nature of these dense cores and their connection to star formation will be discussed. Their…
Star formation within the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) may be intimately linked to the orbital dynamics of the gas. Recent models suggest that star formation within the dust ridge molecular clouds (from G0.253+0.016 to Sgr B2) follows an…
Understanding the processes that determine the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) is a critical unsolved problem, with profound implications for many areas of astrophysics. In molecular clouds, stars are formed in cores, gas condensations…
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of the Galactic Center (GC) region of the Milky Way contains a substantial fraction of the molecular mass of the Galaxy >10e7 solar masses yet exhibits an order of magnitude lower star formation efficiency…
The currently available empirical evidence on the star formation processes in the extreme, high-pressure environments induced by galaxy encounters, mostly based on high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging observations, strongly…
Research on Galactic Center star formation is making great advances, in particular due to new data from interferometers spatially resolving molecular clouds in this environment. These new results are discussed in the context of established…
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 are key players in the evolution of galaxies, yet their formation pathway remains unclear. In this work, we use data from several galaxy-wide surveys to build an unbiased dataset of ~700 massive young stellar objects (MYSOs),…
The physical conditions in molecular clouds control the nature and rate of star formation, with consequences for planet formation and galaxy evolution. The focus of this review is on the conditions that characterize regions of star…
We review the properties of turbulent molecular clouds (MCs), focusing on the physical processes that influence star formation (SF). MC formation appears to occur during large-scale compression of the diffuse ISM driven by supernovae,…
Star formation in galaxies relies on the availability of cold, dense gas, which, in turn, relies on factors internal and external to the galaxies. In order to provide a simple model for how star formation is regulated by various physical…
Stars are forming in our galaxy at a rate of between 1 and 4 solar masses of stars per year. In contrast to elliptical galaxies, which are largely devoid of star formation, star formation is still going on in spiral galaxies because of…
It is believed that massive galaxies have quenched their star formation because of active galactic nucleus feedback. However, recent studies have shown that some massive galaxies are still forming stars. We analyze the morphology of 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…
Young galaxies are clumpy, gas-rich, and highly turbulent. Star formation appears to occur by gravitational instabilities in galactic disks. The high dispersion makes the clumps massive and the disks thick. The star formation rate should be…
Many galaxies host pronounced circumnuclear starbursts, fuelled by infalling gas. Such activity is expected to drive the secular evolution of the nucleus and generate super winds, while the intense radiation fields and extreme gas and…
In this work, we constrain the star-forming properties of all possible sites of incipient high-mass star formation in the Milky Way's Galactic Center. We identify dense structures using the CMZoom 1.3mm dust continuum catalog of objects…
Observations suggest that star formation occurs in only one or two crossing times for a range of scales spanning a factor of 1000. These observations include (1) measurements of embedded cluster ages in comparison with the cloud core…