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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.…
Thanks to the advent of sensitive and broad bandwidth instrumentation, complex organic molecules (COMs) have been found in a wide variety of interstellar environments, not only in our Galaxy but also in external galaxies up to a redshift of…
Observations of cold molecular gas reservoirs are critical for understanding the shutdown of star formation in massive galaxies. While dust continuum is an efficient and affordable tracer, this method relies upon the assumption of a…
We study a population of significantly sub-solar enrichment galaxies at z=1.99, to investigate how molecular gas, dust and star-formation relate in low-metallicity galaxies at the peak epoch of star-formation. We target our sample with…
Following the first pioneering efforts in the 1990s that have focused on the detection of the molecular interstellar medium in high redshift galaxies, recent years have brought great advances in our understanding of the actual physical…
We compare molecular gas traced by 12CO(2-1) maps from the HERACLES survey, with tracers of the recent star formation rate (SFR) across 30 nearby disk galaxies. We demonstrate a first-order linear correspondence between Sig_mol and Sig_SFR…
Star formation is a multi-scale, multi-physics problem ranging from the size scale of molecular clouds ($\sim$10s pc) down to the size scales of dense prestellar cores ($\sim$0.1 pc) that are the birth sites of stars. Several physical…
For almost two decades the properties of "dwarf" galaxies have challenged the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm of galaxy formation. Most observed dwarf galaxies consists of a rotating stellar disc embedded in a massive DM halo with a near…
The conjecture that dark matter in galaxies is mostly cold fractal gas is developed in the more general context of the thermodynamics of the ideal isothermal gas subject to gravitational instability. This simple gas model already contains…
(Abridged) The formation of molecular clouds (MCs) from the diffuse interstellar gas appears to be a necessary step for star formation, as young stars invariably occur within them. However, the mechanisms controlling the formation of MCs…
Lenticular galaxies remain remarkably mysterious as a class. Observations to date have not led to any broad consensus about their origins, properties and evolution, though they are often thought to have formed in one big burst of star…
In order to constrain parameters in galaxy formation theories, especially those for a star formation process, we investigate cold gas in elliptical galaxies. We calculate the detection rate of cold gas in them using a semi-analytic model of…
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…
In this article we review the methods used to determine the gas and dust masses of protoplanetary disks, with an emphasis on the lesser characterized total gas mass. Our review encompasses all the indirect tracers and the methodology that…
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are associated with the explosions of massive stars and are accordingly expected to reside in star-forming regions with molecular gas (the fuel for star formation). Previous searches for carbon monoxide (CO),…
Comparison of the ISM properties of a wide range of metal-poor galaxies with normal metal-rich galaxies reveals striking differences. We find that the combination of the low dust abundance and the active star formation results in a very…
The properties of galaxies follow scaling relations related to the physics that govern galaxy evolution. Based on these, we can identify galaxies undergoing specific evolutionary processes such as HI-excess galaxies, which have relatively…
The distribution of dark matter in dwarf galaxies can have important implications on our understanding of galaxy formation as well as the particle physics properties of dark matter. However, accurately characterizing the dark matter content…
We are entering an era in which we will be able to detect and characterize hundreds of dwarf galaxies within the Local Volume. It is already known that a strong dichotomy exists in the gas content and star formation properties of field…
Most models of double-barred galaxies suggest that a molecular gas component is crucial for maintaining long-lived nuclear bars. We have undertaken a CO survey in an attempt to determine the gas content of these systems and to locate double…