Related papers: Early Phases and Initial Conditions for Massive St…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of protostellar collapse is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. Observationally, there are two…
I review massive star formation in our Galaxy, focusing on initial conditions in Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs), including the search for massive pre-stellar cores (PSCs), and modeling of later stages of massive protostars, i.e., hot…
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…
At the earliest evolutionary stages, massive star-forming regions are deeply embedded within their natal cores and not observable at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Interferometric high-spatial resolution mm dust continuum…
The initial conditions are critical for understanding high-mass star formation, but are not well observed. Built on our previous characterization of a Galaxy-wide sample of 463 candidate high-mass starless clumps (HMSCs), here we…
As Pr. Th. Henning said at the conference, cold precursors of high-mass stars are now "hot topics". We here propose some observational criteria to identify massive infrared-quiet dense cores which can host the high-mass analogs of Class 0…
The earliest phases of massive star formation are found in cold and dense infrared dark clouds (IRDCs). Since the detection method of IRDCs is very sensitive to the local properties of the background emission, we present here an alternative…
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…
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…
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…
Star formation generally proceeds inside-out, with overdense regions inside protostellar cores collapsing rapidly and progressively less dense regions following later. Consequently, a small protostar will form early in the evolution of a…
Low-mass dense cores represent the state of molecular gas associated with the earliest phases of low-mass star formation. Such cores are called "protostellar" or "starless," depending on whether they do or do not contain compact sources of…
In this chapter I review theoretical models for the formation of very massive stars. After a brief overview of some relevant observations, I spend the bulk of the chapter describing two possible routes to the formation of very massive…
This review covers hot cores in the context of high-mass star formation. After giving an overview of chemical processes and diversity during high-mass star formation, it reviews the `warm envelope' phase which probably precedes the…
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…
We describe how star formation is expected to proceed in the early metal-free Universe, focusing on the very first generations of stars. We then discuss how the star formation process may change as the effects of metallicity, external…
Feedback from massive stars plays an important role in the formation of star clusters. Whether a very massive star is born early or late in the cluster formation timeline has profound implications for the star cluster formation and assembly…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
It has been proposed that some hot molecular cores (HMCs) harbor a young embedded massive star, which heats an infalling envelope and accretes mass at a rate high enough to ``choke off'' an incipient HII region. This class of HMCs would…
UltraCompact HII regions are signposts of high mass star formation. Since high-mass star formation occurs in clusters, one expects to find even earlier phases of massive star formation in the vicinity of UltraCompact HII regions. Here, we…