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Interstellar dust links the formation of the first stars to the rocky planet we inhabit by playing a pivotal role in the cooling and fragmentation of molecular clouds, and catalyzing the formation of water and organic molecules. Despite its…
We have performed a large set of high-resolution cosmological simulations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics to study the formation of the first luminous objects in the LCDM cosmology. We follow the collapse of primordial gas clouds in…
In spite of significant recent and ongoing research efforts, most of the early evolution and long-term fate of young massive star clusters remain clouded in uncertainties. Here, I discuss our understanding of the initial conditions of star…
The cosmic microwave background and the cosmic expansion can be interpreted as evidence that the Universe underwent an extremely hot and dense phase about 14 Gyr ago. The nucleosynthesis computations tell us that the Universe emerged from…
We explore a mechanism for the formation of the first globular clusters, operating during the assembly of dwarf galaxies at high redshifts, z > 10. The substructure in the dark matter and the corresponding potential wells are responsible…
Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…
In these lectures I review observations of star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies to develop a physical intuition for understanding star formation in the local and high-redshift Universe. A lot of this material is…
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…
Low-mass dense cores represent the state of molecular gas associated with the earliest phases of low-mass star formation. Such cores are called "protostellar" or "starless," depending on whether they do or do not contain compact sources of…
Observations of the interstellar medium by the Herschel, Planck etc. infrared satellites throw doubt on standard {\Lambda}CDMHC cosmological processes to form gravitational structures. According to the Hydro-Gravitational-Dynamics (HGD)…
We investigate the sources and amount of dust in early galaxies. We discuss dust nucleation in stellar atmospheres using published extended atmosphere models, stellar evolution tracks and nucleation conditions and conclude that the (TPAGB)…
Using radiation-hydrodynamic cosmological simulations, we present a detailed ($0.1$ pc resolution), physically motivated portrait of a typical-mass dwarf galaxy before the epoch of reionization, resolving the formation and evolution of star…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
Giant bulgeless disk galaxies, theoretically expected to be rare in the early Universe, have been confirmed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to exist as early as 2 billion years after the Big Bang. These morphologically extreme…
The infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) G11.11$-$0.12 and G28.34$+$0.06 are two of the best-studied IRDCs in our Galaxy. These two clouds host clumps at different stages of evolution, including a massive dense clump in both clouds that is dark…
The Milky Way contains several distinct old stellar components that provide a fossil record of its formation. We can understand their spatial distribution and kinematics in a hierarchical formation scenario by associating the proto-galactic…
The discovery of young globular clusters in merging galaxies and other environments provides an opportunity to study directly the process of globular cluster formation. Empirically it appears that globular cluster formation occurs…
We propose that bound, young massive stellar clusters form from dense clouds that have escape speeds greater than the sound speed in photo-ionized gas. In these clumps, radiative feedback in the form of gas ionization is bottled up,…
We use the stellar evolution code MESA to study dark stars. Dark stars (DSs), which are powered by dark matter (DM) self-annihilation rather than by nuclear fusion, may be the first stars to form in the Universe. We compute stellar models…
The process of star formation from metal-free gas is investigated by following the evolution of accreting protostars with emphasis on the properties of massive objects. The main aim is to establish the physical processes that determine the…