Related papers: Extreme Starbursts and Molecular Clouds in Galaxie…
Starbursts are important because they can serve as local analogs of the processes that were important in the origin and early evolution of galaxies and in the heating and chemical enrichment of the inter-galactic medium. They may also play…
Recent observations show a large concentration of galaxies at high redshift. At first sight strong clustering of galaxies at high redshifts seems to be in contradiction with the models of structure formation. In this paper we show that such…
In this review, I present the case for how massive stars may form through stellar collisions. This mechanism requires very high stellar densities, up to 4 orders of magnitude higher than are observed in the cores of dense young clusters. In…
The largest galaxies in the Universe reside in galaxy clusters. Using sensitive observations of carbon-monoxide, we show that the Spiderweb Galaxy -a massive galaxy in a distant protocluster- is forming from a large reservoir of molecular…
Post-starburst (PSB), or 'E+A', galaxies represent a rapid transitional phase between major, gas-rich mergers and gas-poor, quiescent early-type galaxies. Surprisingly, many PSBs have been shown to host a significant interstellar medium…
We review recent advances in the analytical and numerical modeling of the star formation rate in molecular clouds and discuss the available observational constraints. We focus on molecular clouds as the fundamental star formation sites,…
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…
Recent work has both illuminated and mystified our attempts to understand cosmic rays (CRs) in starburst galaxies. I discuss my new research exploring how CRs interact with the ISM in starbursts. Molecular clouds provide targets for CR…
Post-starburst (or "E+A") galaxies are characterized by low H$\alpha$ emission and strong Balmer absorption, suggesting a recent starburst, but little current star formation. Although many of these galaxies show evidence of recent mergers,…
Copious star formation occurs in the dense Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of our Galaxy, but at a much smaller rate than occurs in a comparable mass of molecular gas in the Galactic disk. The combination of large turbulent velocity…
The nature of the starburst phenomenon in galaxies is investigated using a narrow band color system designed to study color evolution in distant clusters. Work on zero redshift, luminous far-IR galaxies, calibrated by starburst models,…
Extreme-mass-ratio bursts (EMRBs) are a class of potentially interesting gravitational wave signals. They are produced when a compact object passes through periapsis on a highly eccentric orbit about a much more massive object; we consider…
Super star clusters --- extremely massive clusters found predominately in starburst environments --- are essential building blocks in the formation of galaxies and thought to dominate star formation in the high-redshift universe. However,…
Rapid formation of supermassive black holes occurs in dense nuclear star clusters that are initially gas-dominated. Stellar-mass black hole remnants of the most massive cluster sink into the core, where a massive runaway black hole forms as…
The most massive galaxies in the present-day Universe are found to lie in the centres of rich clusters. They have old, coeval stellar populations suggesting that the bulk of their stars must have formed at early epochs in spectacular…
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)…
We investigated the evolution of interacting disk galaxies using high-resolution $N$-body/SPH simulations, taking into account the multiphase nature of the interstellar medium (ISM). In our high-resolution simulations, a large-scale…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
Star formation happens in two types of environment: ultraviolet-bright starbursts (like 30 Doradus and HII galaxies at low redshift and Lyman-break galaxies at high redshift) and infrared-bright dust-enshrouded regions (which may be…
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…