Related papers: Detection of a septuple stellar system in formatio…
Planets are a natural byproduct of the stellar formation process, resulting from local aggregations of material within the disks surrounding young stars. Whereas signatures of gas-giant planets at large orbital separations have been…
The spatial distribution and lifetime of molecular gas in the inner regions of young circumstellar disks are key to understanding the formation of planetary systems. Gas-rich disks are observed to disperse in the first ~10 Myr, and recent…
Newly formed stars are often observed to possess circumstellar disks, from which mass continues to be accreted onto the star and fed into outflowing jets, and which eventually may evolve into dusty debris disks and planetary systems. Recent…
Recent work has demonstrated that exoplanetary system properties correlate strongly with ambient stellar clustering in six-dimensional stellar position-velocity phase space, quantified by dividing planetary systems into sub-samples with…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
The study of the internal structure of star clusters provides important clues concerning their formation mechanism and dynamical evolution. There are both observational and numerical evidences indicating that open clusters evolve from an…
Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars…
Interpenetrating streams of solids and gas in a Keplerian disk produce a local, linear instability. The two components mutually interact via aerodynamic drag, which generates radial drift and triggers unstable modes. The secular instability…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
Disk-mediated accretion is central to theories of massive star formation, setting the initial conditions for their evolution. Yet observations of Keplerian disks around early O-type protostars remain scarce, as they are often blended into…
We still do not understand how planets form, or why extra-solar planetary systems are so different from our own solar system. But the last few years have dramatically changed our view of the discs of gas and dust around young stars.…
We discuss the factors influencing the formation and gravitational fragmentation of protostellar discs. We start with a review of how observations of prestellar cores can be analysed statistically to yield plausible initial conditions for…
Recent ALMA observation has revealed multiple ring structures formed in a protoplanetary disk around HL Tau. Prior to the ALMA observation of HL Tau, theoretical analysis of secular gravitational instability (GI) described a possible…
(Abridged) Context. Most massive stars are located in multiple stellar systems. Magnetic fields are believed to be essential in the accretion and ejection processes around single massive protostars. Aims. Our aim is to unveil the influence…
Only star clusters that are sufficiently compact and massive survive largely unharmed beyond 10 Myr. However, their compactness means a high stellar density which can lead to strong gravitational interactions between the stars. As young…
We attempt to determine the dominant processes acting on star-forming disk galaxies as a result of the cluster environment by studying the normalised rates and radial distributions of star formation in galaxies within low-redshift clusters.…
Abridged: We use three-dimensional SPH simulations to investigate the collapse of low-mass prestellar cores and the formation and early evolution of protostellar discs. The initial conditions are slightly supercritical Bonnor-Ebert spheres…
We suggest that planets, brown dwarfs, and even low mass stars can be formed by fragmentation of protoplanetary disks around very massive stars M>~100 solar masses. We discuss how fragmentation conditions make the formation of very massive…
The past decade has seen a revolution in our understanding of protoplanetary disk evolution and planet formation in single star systems. However, the majority of solar-type stars form in binary systems, so the impact of binary companions on…
Star formation is enhanced in spiral arms because of a combination of orbit crowding, cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities. The characteristic mass for the instability is 10^7 Msun in gas and 10^5 Msun in stars, and the…