Related papers: Extreme Starbursts and Molecular Clouds in Galaxie…
Starburst galaxies are powered by massive stars. These stars dominate the heating and enrichment with heavy elements of the interstellar medium, gas out of which new stars form. Thus, high-mass stars, and in consequence starburst galaxies,…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
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…
Observations of intensely bright star-forming galaxies both close by and in the distant Universe at first glance seem to emphasize their similarity. But look a little closer, and differences emerge.
In this contribution I summarize our current knowledge of the nature and significance of starburst-driven galactic superwinds. These flows are driven primarily by the kinetic energy supplied by supernovae. Superwinds are complex, multiphase…
Massive galaxies in the early Universe have been shown to be forming stars at surprisingly high rates. Prominent examples are dust-obscured galaxies which are luminous when observed at sub-millimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths and which may be…
Recent simulation work has successfully captured the formation of the star clusters that have been observed in merging galaxies. These studies, however, tend to focus on studying extreme starbursts, such as the Antennae galaxies. We aim to…
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are associated with the explosions of massive stars and are accordingly expected to reside in star-forming regions with molecular gas (the fuel for star formation). Previous searches for carbon monoxide (CO),…
The high-density star formation typical of the merger/starburst events that power the large IR luminosities of Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs) (L_{IR}>10^{12}Lsol) throughout the Universe results to extraordinarily high cosmic ray…
We consider the hypothesis that the formation of elliptical galaxies includes a phase in which star formation is mostly restricted to massive stars, with the bias towards high mass stars increasing with elliptical galaxy mass. The mass…
Galaxy interactions and mergers play a significant, but still debated and poorly understood role in the star formation history of galaxies. Numerical and theoretical models cannot yet explain the main properties of merger-induced…
I review the properties of starburst galaxies in the nearby and distant universe to decipher their evolution as a distinct extragalactic class. The physical processes and environments of massive star-formation appear to be similar out to z…
Starbursts are episodes of intense star-formation in the central regions of galaxies, and are the sites of roughly 25% of the high-mass star-formation in the local universe. In this contribution I review the role starbursts play in the…
Radio observations of starburst regions in galaxies have revealed groups of compact nonthermal sources that may be radiative supernova remnants expanding in the interclump medium of molecular clouds. Because of the high pressure in…
Mergers of gas-rich galaxies lead to gravitationally driven increases in gas pressure that can trigger intense bursts of star and cluster formation. Although star formation itself is clustered, most newborn stellar aggregates are unbound…
One of the most prominent features of galaxy clusters is the presence of a dominant population of massive ellipticals in their cores. Stellar archaeology suggests that these gigantic beasts assembled most of their stars in the early…
I will try to put the ultraluminous galaxy phenomenon into a broad cosmological context. Viewed from this perspective, the significance of ultraluminous galaxies and the `starburst vs. monster' debate becomes clear. Ultraluminous galaxies…
Starburst (SB) galaxies are a rare population of galaxies with star formation rates (SFRs) greatly exceeding those of the majority of star-forming galaxies with similar stellar mass. It is unclear whether these bursts are the result of…
We study the shape and evolution of the star formation main sequence in three independently developed semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We focus, in particular, on the characterization of the model galaxies that are significantly…
Galaxies grow inefficiently, with only a few percent of the available gas converted into stars each free-fall time. Feedback processes, such as outflowing winds driven by radiation pressure, supernovae or supermassive black hole accretion,…