Related papers: Russell Lecture: Dark Star Formation and Cooling I…
A mechanism is identified whereby dark matter (DM) in protostellar halos dramatically alters the current theoretical framework for the formation of the first stars. Heat from neutralino DM annihilation is shown to overwhelm any cooling…
Star formation in most galaxies requires cosmic gas accretion because the gas consumption time is short compared to the Hubble time. This accretion presumably comes from a combination of infalling satellite debris, cold flows, and…
Star formation depends on the available gaseous "fuel" as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition…
We suggest that low-mass compact objects (hadron stars, quark stars) with $M<1 M_{\odot}$ can appear only due to fragmentation of rapidly rotating proto-neutron stars. Such low-mass stars receive large kicks due to an explosion of a lighter…
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…
A large fraction of the gas in the Galaxy is cold, dense, and molecular. If all this gas collapsed under the influence of gravity and formed stars in a local free-fall time, the star formation rate in the Galaxy would exceed that observed…
The standard cold dark matter plus cosmological constant model predicts that galaxies form within dark-matter haloes, and that low-mass galaxies are more dark-matter dominated than massive ones. The unexpected discovery of two low-mass…
Star formation in galaxies relies on the availability of cold, dense gas, which, in turn, relies on factors internal and external to the galaxies. In order to provide a simple model for how star formation is regulated by various physical…
We present a model for the star formation process during the initial collapse of dark matter haloes at redshifts z=0-30. We derive a simple expression for the characteristic stellar mass scale during this initial burst of star formation. In…
We study the detailed structure of galaxies at redshifts z > 2 using cosmological simulations with improved modeling of the interstellar medium and star formation. The simulations follow the formation and dissociation of molecular hydrogen,…
It is shown, in the framework of the Thomas-Fermi model at finite temperature, that a cooling non-degenerate gas of massive neutrinos will, at a certain temperature, become unstable and undergo a first-order phase transition in which…
Stars form in the Galaxy with a wide range in mass. If the mass is below 7% of the Sun's, then the object does not become hot enough for stable hydrogen burning. These substellar objects are called brown dwarfs. Maps of the sky at infrared…
The $\Lambda$CDM scenario to form galaxies encounters many problems when confronted with observations, namely the prediction of dark matter cusps in all galaxies, and in particular in dwarf irregulars, dominated by dark matter, or the low…
I review recent progress in understanding the formation of the first stars and quasars. The initial conditions for their emergence are given by the now firmly established model of cosmological structure formation. Numerical simulations of…
We studied the formation of compact bosonic objects through a dissipationless cooling mechanism. Implications of the existence of this mechanism are discussed, including the abundance of bosonic stars in the universe, and the possibility of…
We use high resolution simulations to study the formation and distribution of galaxies within a cluster which forms hierarchically. We follow both dark matter and baryonic gas which is subject to thermal pressure, shocks and radiative…
How and when did the first generation of stars form at the end of the cosmic dark ages? Quite generically, within variants of the cold dark matter model of cosmological structure formation, the first sources of light are expected to form in…
Population III stars are believed to have been more massive than typical stars today and to have formed in relative isolation. The thermodynamic impact of metals is expected to induce a transition leading to clustered, low-mass Population…
We outline a scenario of galaxy formation in which the gas in galaxy-forming regions was preheated to high entropy by vigorous energy feedback associated with the formation of stars in old ellipticals and bulges and with AGN activity. Such…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…