Related papers: Structure and conditions in massive star forming g…
The formation of massive stars is currently an unsolved problems in astrophysics. Understanding the formation of massive stars is essential because they dominate the luminous, kinematic, and chemical output of stars. Furthermore, their…
The current generation of millimeter interferometers have revealed a population of compact (r <~ 0.1 pc), massive (M ~ 100 Msun) gas cores that are the likely progenitors of massive stars. I review models for the evolution of these objects…
We calculate the formation of dust clouds in atmospheres of giant gas-planets. The chemical structure and the evolution of the grain size distribution in the dust cloud layer is discussed based on a consistent treatment of seed formation,…
The observed discrete multiple stellar populations and internal abundance spreads in r- and s-process elements within globular clusters (GCs) have been suggested to be explained self-consistently by discrete star formation events over a…
Star formation is enhanced in spiral arms because of a combination of orbit crowding, cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities. The characteristic mass for the instability is 10^7 Msun in gas and 10^5 Msun in stars, and the…
I review theoretical models of star formation and how they apply across the stellar mass spectrum. Several distinct theories are under active study for massive star formation, especially Turbulent Core Accretion, Competitive Accretion and…
The similarity between the mass and spatial distributions of pre-stellar gas cores in star-forming clouds and young stars in clusters provides strong circumstantial evidence that these gas cores are the direct progenitors of individual…
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…
Dense pockets of cold, molecular gas precede the formation of stars. During their infancy and later phases of evolution, stars inject considerable energy into the interstellar medium by driving shocks either due to ionising radiation or…
Our knowledge of the initial conditions and early stages of high mass star formation is very limited. We will review recent surveys of regions in the early stages of massive star formation using molecular tracers of high density and dust…
Mass segregation is seen in many star clusters, but whether massive stars form in the center of a cluster or migrate there dynamically is still debated. N-body simulations have shown that early dynamical mass segregation is possible when…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. These systems, containing from tens to thousands of stars and typically significant mass in gas in the youngest systems, evolve due to a combination of stellar and star-gas…
Star formation in galaxies is inefficient, and understanding how star formation is regulated in galaxies is one of the most fundamental challenges of contemporary astrophysics. Radiative cooling, feedback from supernovae and active galactic…
Properties of normal galactic star formation, including the density dependence, threshold density, turbulent scaling relations, and clustering properties, are applied to the formation of galactic bulges. One important difference is that the…
In spite of significant recent and ongoing research efforts, most of the early evolution and long-term fate of young massive star clusters remain clouded in uncertainties. Here, I discuss our understanding of the initial conditions of star…
Stars do not generally form in isolation. Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds. Feedback from clustered stars is almost…
We study the formation and early evolution of star clusters that have a wide range of masses and background cloud mass surface densities, $\Sigma_{\rm cloud}$, which help set the initial sizes, densities, and velocity dispersions of the…
Observational evidence from local star-forming regions mandates that star formation occurs shortly after, or even during, molecular cloud formation. Models of the formation of molecular clouds in large-scale converging flows have identified…
The interstellar medium of galaxies is composed of multiple phases, including molecular, atomic, and ionized gas, as well as dust. Stars are formed within this medium from cold molecular gas clouds, which collapse due to their gravitational…
The formation of stars from gas drives the evolution of galaxies. Yet, it remains one of the hardest processes to understand when trying to connect observations of stellar and galaxy populations to models of large scale structure formation.…