Related papers: Triggered star formation in expanding shells
In this paper we address the question whether star formation is driven by local processes or the large scale environment. To do so, we investigate star formation in collisional debris where the gravitational potential well and velocity…
A large fraction of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars may form by gravitational fragmentation of relatively massive (a few 0.1 Msun), extended (a few hundred AU) discs around Sun-like stars. We present an ensemble of radiative hydrodynamic…
We review the physics of star formation, and its links with the state of the ISM in galaxies. Current obervations indicate that the preferred mode of star formation is clustered. Given that OB associations provide the dominant energy input…
Star formation in galaxies is triggered by a combination of processes, including gravitational instabilities, spiral wave shocks, stellar compression, and turbulence compression. Some of these persist in the far outer regions where the…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
We present hydrodynamic simulations of a major merger of disk galaxies, and study the ISM dynamics and star formation properties. High spatial and mass resolutions of 12pc and 4x10^4 M_sol allow to resolve cold and turbulent gas clouds…
Due to the gas rich environments of early circumstellar disks, the gravitational collapse of cool, dense regions of the disk form fragments largely composed of gas. During formation, disk fragments may attain increased metallicities as they…
By means of analytical calculations, we explore the self-enrichment scenario for Globular Cluster formation. According to this scenario, an initial burst of star formation occurs inside the core radius of the initial gaseous distribution.…
In this paper, we calculate simulated scattered light images of a circumstellar disk in which a planet is forming by gravitational instability. The simulated images bear no correlation to the vertically integrated surface density of the…
Large-scale star formation in disk galaxies is hypothesized to be driven by global gravitational instability. The observed gas surface density is commonly used to compute the strength of gravitational instability, but according to this…
We studied the formation process of star clusters using high-resolution N-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamcs simulations of colliding galaxies. The total number of particles is 1.2x10^8 for our high resolution run. The gravitational…
We present a suite of 3D multi-physics MHD simulations following star formation in isolated turbulent molecular gas disks ranging from 5 to 500 parsecs in radius. These simulations are designed to survey the range of surface densities…
We study the response of the gaseous component of a galactic disc to the time dependent potential generated by N-body simulations of a spiral galaxy. The results show significant variation of the spiral structure of the gas which might be…
We study the gravitational stability of gaseous streams in the complex environment of a galaxy merger, because mergers are known to be places of ongoing massive cluster formation and bursts of star formation. We find an analytic stability…
One of the present concepts for the onset of massive star formation is the Kennicutt criterion. This relates the onset of massive star formation to a general gravitational instability of the gas disks of spiral galaxies. It is often…
Star formation by gravitational instabilities, sequential triggering, and turbulence triggering are briefly reviewed in order to compare the various mechanisms that are observed in main galaxy disks with those in the inner kiloparsec…
Super-sonic turbulence fragments molecular clouds (MC) into a very complex density field with density contrasts of several orders of magnitude. A fraction of the gas is locked into dense and gravitationally bound cores, which collapse as…
Star formation triggering mechanisms are reviewed, including the direct compression of clouds and globules, the compression and collapse of molecular clouds at the edges of HII regions and supernovae, the expansion and collapse of giant…
Stars and star clusters form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest…
The fragmentation of molecular clouds (MC) into protostellar cores is a central aspect of the process of star formation. Because of the turbulent nature of super-sonic motions in MCs, it has been suggested that dense structures such as…