Related papers: Collapsing molecular clouds with tracer particles:…
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…
Linear analysis of the formation of protostellar cores in planar magnetic interstellar clouds shows that molecular clouds exhibit a preferred length scale for collapse that depends on the mass-to-flux ratio and neutral-ion collision time…
(Abridged) We present a series of decaying turbulence simulations that represent a cluster-forming clump within a molecular cloud, investigating the role of magnetic fields on the formation of potential star-forming cores. We present an…
Using numerical simulations, we investigate the gravitational evolution of filamentary molecular cloud structures and their condensation into dense protostellar cores. One possible process is the so called 'edge effect', the pile-up of…
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…
We summarize the current status of the turbulent model of star formation in turbulent molecular clouds. In this model, clouds, clumps and cores form a hierarchy of nested density fluctuations caused by the turbulence, and either collapse or…
Ongoing surveys are in the process of measuring the chemical abundances in large numbers of stars, with the ultimate goal of reconstructing the formation history of the Milky Way using abundances as tracers. However, interpretation of these…
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…
Dense gas in molecular clouds is an important signature of ongoing and future star formation. We identify and track dense cores in the STARFORGE simulations, following the core evolution from birth through dispersal by stellar feedback for…
Context: The chemical composition of a molecular cloud changes dramatically as it collapses to form a low-mass protostar and circumstellar disk. Two-dimensional (2D) chemodynamical models are required to properly study this process. Aims:…
In a previous paper we introduced a new method for simulating collisional gravitational $N$-body systems with linear time scaling on $N$, based on the Multi-Particle Collision (MPC) approach. This allows us to simulate globular clusters…
Core collapse is a prominent evolutionary stage of self-gravitating systems. In an idealised collisionless approximation, the region around the cluster core evolves in a self-similar way prior to the core collapse. Thus, its radial density…
We present results from our numerical simulations of collapsing massive molecular cloud cores. These numerical calculations show that massive stars assemble quickly with mass accretion rates exceeding 10^-3 Msol/yr and confirm that the mass…
We study the formation, evolution and collapse of dense cores by tracking structures in a magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a star-forming cloud. We identify cores using the dendrogram algorithm and utilize machine learning techniques,…
(Abridged) Aims & Methods. A two-dimensional, semi-analytical model is presented that follows, for the first time, the chemical evolution from a collapsing molecular cloud (a pre-stellar core) to a protostar and circumstellar disk. The…
We demonstrate that the observationally inferred rapid onset of star formation after parental molecular clouds have assembled can be achieved by flow-driven cloud formation of atomic gas, using our previous three-dimensional numerical…
We examine the problem of the collapse and fragmentation of molecular clouds with a Gaussian density distribution with high resolution, double precision numerical simulations using the GADGET-2 code. To describe the thermodynamic properties…
The dense molecular cloud cores that form stars, like other self-gravitating objects, undergo bulk oscillations. Just at the point of gravitational instability, their fundamental oscillation mode has zero frequency. We study, using…
Properties of candidate stars, forming out of molecular clouds, depend on the ambient conditions of the parent cloud. We present a series of 2D and 3D simulations of fragmentation of molecular clouds in starburst regions as well as clouds…
We present the results of fully 3-D hydrodynamic simulations of the gravitational collapse of isolated, turbulent molecular cloud cores. Starting from initial states of hydrostatic equilibrium, we follow the collapse of both singular and…