Related papers: Can massive stars form in low mass clouds?
Observations indicate that young massive star clusters in spiral and dwarf galaxies follow a relation between luminosity of the brightest young cluster and the star-formation rate (SFR) of the host galaxy, in the sense that higher SFRs lead…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
We study the formation and early evolution of star clusters that have a wide range of masses and background cloud mass surface densities, $\Sigma_{\rm cloud}$, which help set the initial sizes, densities, and velocity dispersions of the…
The physical mechanism that allows massive stars to form is a major unsolved problem in astrophysics. Stars with masses $\gtsim 20$ $\msun$ reach the main sequence while still embedded in their natal clouds, and the immense radiation output…
How starburst clusters form out of molecular clouds is still an open question. In this article, I highlight some of the key constraints in this regard, that one can get from the dynamical evolutionary properties of dense stellar systems. I…
When an universal untruncated star cluster initial mass function (CIMF) described by a power-law distribution is assumed, the mass of the most massive star cluster in a galaxy (M_max) is the result of the size-of-sample (SoS) effect. This…
We present a model for the formation of massive ($M > 10 M_\odot$) stars through accretion-induced collisions in the cores of embedded dense stellar clusters. This model circumvents the problem of accreting onto a star whose luminosity is…
We present a thorough literature study of the most-massive star, m_max, in several young star clusters in order to assess whether or not star clusters are populated from the stellar initial mass function (IMF) by random sampling over the…
Stars do not generally form in isolation. Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds. Feedback from clustered stars is almost…
Feedback from massive stars plays an important role in the formation of star clusters. Whether a very massive star is born early or late in the cluster formation timeline has profound implications for the star cluster formation and assembly…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
We model the formation of high-mass stars, specifying the accretion rate in terms of the instantaneous and final mass of the star, the ambient pressure of the star-forming region and the form of polytropic pressure support of the…
Here we model a star forming factory in which the continuous creation of stars results in a highly concentrated, massive (globular cluster-like) stellar system. We show that under very general conditions a large-scale gravitational…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
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),…
Our knowledge of the initial conditions and early stages of high mass star formation is very limited. We will review recent surveys of regions in the early stages of massive star formation using molecular tracers of high density and dust…
We have made a new compilation of observations of maximum stellar mass versus cluster membership number from the literature, which we analyse for consistency with the predictions of a simple random drawing hypothesis for stellar mass…
The discovery around the turn of the millenium of a population of very massive (M$_\star$ > 2$\times$10$^6$ M$_\odot$) compact stellar systems (CSS) with physical properties (radius, velocity dispersion, stellar mass etc.) that are…
We use direct N-body simulations of gas embedded star clusters to study the importance of stellar collisions for the formation and mass accretion history of high-mass stars. Our clusters start in virial equilibrium as a mix of gas and…