Related papers: Accretion in stellar clusters and the IMF
Galaxies accrete their mass by means of both smooth accretion from the cosmic web, and the mergers of smaller entities. We wish to quantify the respective role of these two modes of accretion, which could determine the morphological types…
Massive stars (with mass m_* > 8 solar masses) are fundamental to the evolution of galaxies, because they produce heavy elements, inject energy into the interstellar medium, and possibly regulate the star formation rate. The individual star…
Massive stars produce so much light that the radiation pressure they exert on the gas and dust around them is stronger than their gravitational attraction, a condition that has long been expected to prevent them from growing by accretion.…
We discuss the possibility that gravitational focusing, is responsible for the power-law mass function of star clusters $N(\log M) \propto M^{-1}$. This power law can be produced asymptotically when the mass accretion rate of an object…
We examine the temperature history of gas accreted by forming galaxies in SPH simulations. About half the gas shock heats to roughly the virial temperature of the galaxy potential well before cooling, condensing, and forming stars, but the…
Young stellar clusters across nearly five orders of magnitude in mass appear to follow a power-law mass-radius relationship (MRR), $R_{\star} \propto M_{\star}^{\alpha}$, with $\alpha \approx 0.2 - 0.33$. We develop a simple analytic model…
We show that massive stars and stellar clusters are formed simultaneously, the global evolution of the forming cluster is what allows the central stars to become massive. We predict that massive star forming clumps, such as those observed…
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…
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…
During a giant eruption of a very massive star in the binary system, the companion star can accrete a large amount of mass that can change its properties and potentially its subsequent evolution. The effect depends on the companion mass,…
Young stellar systems orbiting in the potential of their birth cluster can accrete from the dense molecular interstellar medium during the period between the star's birth and the dispersal of the cluster's gas. Over this time, which may…
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)…
Identifying the processes that determine strength, duration and variability of protostellar mass growth is a fundamental ingredient of any theory of star formation. I discuss protostellar mass accretion rates dM/dt from numerical models…
We model the formation of high-mass stars, specifying the accretion rate in terms of the instantaneous and final mass of the star, the ambient pressure of the star-forming region and the form of polytropic pressure support of the…
Massive stars (> 8 $M_\odot$) are known to have high degrees of multiplicity, e.g., with about 60% in triples or higher-order multiples. Such high levels of multiplicity may arise during formation (primary multiplicity) or through dynamical…
We develop a semi-analytic model to investigate how accretion onto wide low-mass binary stars can result in a close high-mass binary system. The key ingredient is to allow mass accretion while limiting the gain in angular momentum. We…
We present a method of determining lower limits on the masses of pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars and so constraining the PMS evolutionary tracks. This method uses the red-shifted absorption feature observed in some emission-line profiles of T…
It is believed that the majority of stars form in clusters. Therefore it is likely that the gas physical conditions that prevail in forming clusters, largely determine the properties of stars that form and in particular the initial mass…
[Context] Two competing models describe the formation of massive stars in objects like the Orion Trapezium. In the turbulent core accretion model, the resulting stellar masses are directly related to the mass distribution of the cloud…
We have reexamined the similarity solution for a self-gravitating isothermal gas sphere and examined implication to star formation in a turbulent cloud. When parameters are adequately chosen, the similarity solution expresses an accreting…