Related papers: Competitive Accretion in Clusters and the IMF
The realization that most stars form in clusters, raises the question of whether star/planet formation are influenced by the cluster environment. The stellar density in the most prevalent clusters is the key factor here. Whether dominant…
The formation of a star is a dynamic process fed by the gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud core. Theoretical models and observations suggest that the majority of this infalling material settles into a protoplanetary disk before…
Stars and star clusters 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…
We study the evolution of embedded clusters. The equations of motion of the stars in the cluster are solved by direct N-body integration while taking the effects of stellar evolution and the hydrodynamics of the natal gas content into…
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…
Globular clusters (GCs), once thought to be well approximated as simple stellar populations (i.e. all stars having the same age and chemical abundance), are now known to host a variety of anomalies, such as multiple discrete (or spreads in)…
Star formation occurs within dense regions of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), however, exactly how gas collects and evolves to form individual stars and what role dense cores play remains unclear. We use the Lagrangian cell information in…
Although fundamental for astrophysics, the processes that produce massive stars are not well understood. Large distances, high extinction, and short timescales of critical evolutionary phases make observations of these processes…
We investigate the impact of different initial conditions for the initial density profile and the initial turbulence on the formation process of protostellar clusters. We study the collapse of dense molecula r cloud cores with…
The ability to resolve all processes which drive galaxy formation is one of the most fundamental goals in extragalactic astronomy. While star formation rates and the merger history are now measured with increasingly high certainty, the role…
At the earliest evolutionary stages, massive star-forming regions are deeply embedded within their natal cores and not observable at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Interferometric high-spatial resolution mm dust continuum…
The formation of supermassive stars is believed to be an essential intermediate step for the formation of the massive black hole seeds that become the supermassive black holes powering the quasars observed in the early Universe. Numerical…
During star cluster formation, ongoing mass accretion is resisted by stellar feedback in the form of protostellar outflows from the low-mass stars and photo-ionization and radiation pressure feedback from the massive stars. We model the…
After the stars of a new, embedded star cluster have formed they blow the remaining gas out of the cluster. Especially winds of high mass stars and definitely the on-set of the first super novae can remove the residual gas from a cluster.…
Close encounters between stars in star forming regions are important as they can perturb or destroy protoplanetary discs, young planetary systems, and stellar multiple systems. We simulate simple, viralised, equal-mass $N$-body star…
The entropy distribution of the intracluster medium and the shape of its confining potential well completely determine the X-ray properties of a relaxed cluster of galaxies, motivating us to explore the origin of intracluster entropy and to…
The formation of stellar clusters dictates the pace at which galaxies evolve, and solving the question of their formation will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of the Universe as a whole. While it is well known that star clusters…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
Mass segregation is seen in many star clusters, but whether massive stars form in the center of a cluster or migrate there dynamically is still debated. N-body simulations have shown that early dynamical mass segregation is possible when…
Stars collect most of their mass during the protostellar stage, yet the accretion luminosity and stellar parameters, which are needed to compute the mass accretion rate, are poorly constrained for the youngest sources. The aim of this work…