Related papers: Star Formation in Turbulent Molecular Clouds
Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass from the surrounding cloud material. Molecular cloud regions without turbulent driving sources, or where turbulence is driven…
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…
We propose and investigate a new formation mechanism for globular clusters in which they form within molecular clouds that are formed in the shocked regions created by galactic winds driven by successive supernova explosions shortly after…
We present preliminary numerical evidence that the physical conditions in high-mass star forming regions can arise from global gravitational infall, with the velocity dispersions being caused primarily by infall motions rather than random…
We present numerical simulations of the passage of clumpy gas through a galactic spiral shock and the subsequent formation of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). The spiral shock forms dense clouds while dissipating kinetic energy, producing…
Similar to their low-mass counterparts, massive stars likely form via the collapse of pre-stellar molecular cores. Recent observations suggest that most massive cores are subvirial (i.e., not supported by turbulence) and therefore are…
Molecular clouds are prime locations to study the process of star formation. These clouds contain filamentary structures and cores, which are crucial sites for the formation of young stars. The star-formation process has been investigated…
MHD turbulence plays a central role in the physics of star-forming molecular clouds and the interstellar medium. I here show that MHD turbulence in molecular clouds must be driven to account for the observed supersonic motions in the…
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…
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…
Studies of evolved massive stars indicate that they form in a clustered mode. During the earliest evolutionary stages, these regions are embedded within their natal cores. Here, we show high-spatial-resolution interferometric dust continuum…
Star formation is inefficient. Only a few percent of the available gas in molecular clouds forms stars, leading to the observed low star formation rate (SFR). The same holds when averaged over many molecular clouds, such that the SFR of…
Research on Galactic Center star formation is making great advances, in particular due to new data from interferometers spatially resolving molecular clouds in this environment. These new results are discussed in the context of established…
In star forming regions, we can observe different evolutionary stages of various objects and phenomena such as molecular clouds, protostellar jets and outflows, circumstellar disks, and protostars. However, it is difficult to directly…
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…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
Observations indicate that massive stars form in regions of very high surface density, ~1 g cm^-2. Clusters containing massive stars and globular clusters have a comparable column density. The total pressure in clouds of such a column…
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 present a detailed computational study of the assembly of protostellar disks and massive stars in molecular clouds with supersonic turbulence. We follow the evolution of large scale filamentary structures in a cluster-forming clump down…
We discuss the role of turbulence in cloud and star formation, as observed in numerical simulations of the interstellar medium. Turbulent compression at the interfaces of colliding gas streams is responsible for the formation of…