Related papers: Insights into the first and second hydrostatic cor…
Young protostellar discs are likely to be both self-gravitating, and to support grain growth to sizes where the particles decoupled from the gas. This combination could lead to short-wavelength fragmentation of the solid component in…
Sufficiently massive clumps of molecular gas collapse under self-gravity and fragment to spawn a cluster of stars that have a range of masses. We investigate observationally the early stages of formation of a stellar cluster in a massive…
Abridged Context: Snowlines during star and disk formation are responsible for a range of effects during the evolution of protostars, such as setting the chemical composition of the envelope and disk. This in turn influences the formation…
Dense pockets of cold, molecular gas precede the formation of stars. During their infancy and later phases of evolution, stars inject considerable energy into the interstellar medium by driving shocks either due to ionising radiation or…
We present the first coherent dynamical study of the cloud fragmentation-phase, collapse and early stellar evolution of a solar mass star. We determine young star properties as the consequence of the parent cloud evolution. Mass, luminosity…
Population III (pop III) stars were born in halos characterised by a pristine gas composition. In such a halo, once the gas density reaches n$_{\mathrm{H}} \sim$ 1 cm$^{-3}$, molecular cooling leads to the collapse of the gas and the birth…
The similarity between the mass and spatial distributions of pre-stellar gas cores in star-forming clouds and young stars in clusters provides strong circumstantial evidence that these gas cores are the direct progenitors of individual…
Context: Chemical models of dense cloud cores often utilize the so-called pseudo-time-dependent approximation, in which the physical conditions are held fixed and uniform as the chemistry occurs. In this approximation, the initial…
We present a unified model for molecular core formation and evolution, based on numerical simulations of converging, supersonic flows. Our model applies to star formation in GMCs dominated by large-scale turbulence, and contains four main…
Studies of evolved massive stars indicate that they form in a clustered mode. During the earliest evolutionary stages, these regions are embedded within their natal cores. Here, we show high-spatial-resolution interferometric dust continuum…
Most young stars in nearby molecular clouds have estimated ages of 1-2 Myr, suggesting that star formation is rapid. However, small numbers of stars in these regions with inferred ages of >= 5-10 Myr have been cited to argue that star…
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.…
Using smoothed particle hydrodynamics in combination with the special-purpose hardware device GRAPE, we follow the fragmentation process and dynamical evolution in the interior of molecular clouds until most of the gas is converted to form…
The understanding and modeling of the structure and evolution of stars is based on statistical physics as well as on hydrodynamics. Today, a precise identification and proper description of the physical processes at work in stellar…
We investigate general aspects of molecular line formation under conditions which are typical of prestellar cores. Focusing on simple linear molecules, we study formation of their rotational lines by radiative transfer simulations. We…
The physical evolution of low-mass protostars is relatively well-established, however, there are many open questions on the chemical structure of protostars. The chemical fingerprint generated in the early embedded phase of star formation…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is playing a critical role in the history of our universe. We propose a theory that is based solely on local processes, namely the dust opacity limit, the tidal forces and the properties of the…
We discuss problems with some observational estimates indicating long protostellar core lifetimes and large stellar age spreads in molecular clouds. We also point out some additional observational constraints which suggest that protostellar…
We investigate numerically and semi-analytically the collapse of low-mass, rotating prestellar cores. Initially, the cores are in approximate equilibrium with low rotation (the initial ratio of thermal to gravitational energy is $\alpha_0…
Although protostars and disks are often studied separately owing to numerical and observational challenges, breakthroughs in recent years have highlighted the need to study both objects in concert. The role of magnetic fields in this regard…