Related papers: Mass Spectra from Turbulent Fragmentation
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
The distributions of stars and prestellar cores by mass (initial and dense core mass functions, IMF/DCMF) are among the key factors regulating star formation and are the subject of detailed theoretical and observational studies. Results…
We report results from numerical simulations of star formation in the early universe that focus on the role of subsonic turbulence, and investigate whether it can induce fragmentation of the gas. We find that dense primordial gas is highly…
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…
Sufficiently massive clumps of molecular gas collapse under self-gravity and fragment to spawn a cluster of stars that have a range of masses. We investigate observationally the early stages of formation of a stellar cluster in a massive…
The giant, star forming clumps in gas-rich, high redshift disks are commonly assumed to form due to gravitational instabilities, in which protoclumps have a Toomre-$Q$ parameter less than unity. However, some cosmological simulations show…
Star-forming clumps dominate the rest-frame ultraviolet morphology of galaxies at the peak of cosmic star formation. If turbulence driven fragmentation is the mechanism responsible for their formation, we expect their stellar mass function…
We present an analysis of star-forming gas cores in an SPH simulation of a Giant Molecular Cloud. We identify cores using their deep potential wells. This yields a smoother distribution with clearer boundaries than density. Additionally,…
Properties of candidate stars, forming out of molecular clouds, depend on the ambient conditions of the parent cloud. We present a series of 2D and 3D simulations of fragmentation of molecular clouds in starburst regions as well as clouds…
We revisit the origin of Larson's scaling relations, which describe the structure and kinematics of molecular clouds, based on recent observations and large-scale simulations of supersonic turbulence. Using dimensional analysis, we first…
In order to investigate the origin of the interstellar turbulence, detailed observations in the CO J=1--0 and 3--2 lines have been carried out in an interacting region of a molecular cloud with an HII region. As a result, several 1,000 to…
We conduct numerical experiments in which we systematically vary the initial density over four orders of magnitude and the turbulent velocity over a factor ten. In a companion paper, we investigate the dependence of this distribution on the…
In an attempt to determine the outer scale of turbulence driven by localized sources, such as supernova explosions in the interstellar medium, we consider a forcing function given by the gradient of gaussian profiles localized at random…
Observations of magnetic field strengths imply that molecular cloud fragments are individually close to being in a magnetically critical state, even though both magnetic field and column density measurements range over two orders of…
Improving our understanding of the earliest stages of star formation is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. We discuss recent advances made in this area thanks to detailed…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been identified as extragalactic sources which can make a probe of turbulence in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and their host galaxies. To account for the observed millisecond pulses caused by scatter…
We investigate protostellar collapse of molecular cloud cores by numerical simulations, taking into account turbulence and magnetic fields. By using the adaptive mesh refinement technique, the collapse is followed over a wide dynamic range…
Understanding the physics of how stars form is a highly-prioritized goal of modern Astrophysics, in part because star formation is linked to both galactic dynamics on large scales and to the formation of planets on small scales. It is…
We review recent high spatial resolution millimeter continuum and spectral line observations of (proto-)cluster regions. These observations reveal that the mass distribution of prestellar cores is consistent with the initial mass function…
I discuss the role of self-gravity and radiative heating and cooling in shaping the nature of the turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM) of our galaxy. The heating and cooling cause it to be highly compressible, and, in some regimes of…