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We investigate the dust properties and star-formation signature of galaxies in the early universe by stacking 111227 objects in the recently released COSMOS catalogue on maps at wavelengths bracketing the peak of warmed dust emission. We…
We investigate the thermal and dynamical evolution of primordial gas clouds in the universe after decoupling. Comparing the time-scale of dynamical evolution with that of fragmentation, we can estimate the typical fragmentation scale. We…
Studies of the molecular interstellar medium that fuels star formation and supermassive black hole growth in galaxies at cosmological distances have undergone tremendous progress over the past few years. Based on the detection of molecular…
In this review, I survey our current understanding of how the very first stars in the universe formed, with a focus on three main areas of interest: the formation of the first protogalaxies and the cooling of gas within them, the nature and…
The evolutionary sequence for high-mass star formation starts with massive starless clumps that go on to form protostellar, young stellar objects and then compact HII regions. While there are many examples of the three later stages, the…
Condensation of circumstellar dust begins with formation of molecular clusters close to the stellar photosphere. These clusters are predicted to act as condensation cores at lower temperatures and allow efficient dust formation farther away…
Globular clusters are often assumed to be good tracers of major star formation episodes in their host galaxies. While observations over the past 2 decades have confirmed the presence of young objects with globular cluster-like properties in…
The concept that stars form in the modern era began some 60 years ago with the key observation of expanding OB associations. Now we see that these associations are an intermediate scale in a cascade of hierarchical structures that begins on…
We describe the first results from two observational projects aimed at measuring the amount and spatial distribution of dark matter in distant early-type galaxies (E/S0s) and clusters of galaxies. At the galaxy scale, the Lenses Structure…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
We investigate the impact of primordial mass segregation on the formation and evolution of dark star clusters (DSCs). Considering a wide range of initial conditions, we conducted $N$-body simulations of globular clusters (GCs) around the…
Stars mostly form in groups consisting of a few dozen to several ten thousand members. For 30 years, theoretical models provide a basic concept of how such star clusters form and develop: they originate from the gas and dust of collapsing…
The mere existence of multiple stellar generations in Milky Way globular clusters indicates that each generation was unable to stop star formation, that instead persisted unimpeded for several million years. This evidence argues for an…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of star clusters during their formation, assuming that they are born from a turbulent starless clump of a given mass that is embedded within a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a…
We performed $42$ simulations of the first star formation with initial supersonic gas flows relative to the dark matter at the cosmic recombination era. Increasing the initial streaming velocities led to delayed halo formation and increased…
The most distant galaxies detected by JWST are assembling in a Universe that is less than 5\% of its present age. At these times, the progenitors of galaxies like the Milky Way are expected to be about 10,000 times less massive than they…
Globular clusters are compact, gravitationally bound systems of up to a million stars. The GCs in the Milky Way contain some of the oldest stars known, and provide important clues to the early formation and continuing evolution of our…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. These systems, containing from tens to thousands of stars and typically significant mass in gas in the youngest systems, evolve due to a combination of stellar and star-gas…
Most stars are born in rich young stellar clusters (YSCs) embedded in giant molecular clouds. The most massive stars live out their short lives there, profoundly influencing their natal environments by ionizing HII regions, inflating…
I develop a high velocity galaxy collision model to explain a rare but puzzling phenomenon, namely the apparent existence of ultra-diffuse galaxies with little dark matter. Predictions include simultaneous triggering of overpressured dense…