Related papers: Studying Infall
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…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it is an important component of the interstellar medium and plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies, the formation of stars and…
We compute numerical simulations of spherical collapse triggered by a slow increase in external pressure. We compare isothermal models to models including cooling with a simple but self-consistent treatment of the coupling between gas,…
The thermal and chemical evolution of gravitationally collapsing protostellar clouds is investigated, focusing attention on their dependence on metallicity. Calculations are carried out for a range of metallicities spanning the local…
Bipolar outflows constitute some of the best laboratories to study shock chemistry in the interstellar medium. A number of molecular species have their abundance enhanced by several orders of magnitude in the outflow gas, likely as a…
(Abridged) Aims & Methods. A two-dimensional, semi-analytical model is presented that follows, for the first time, the chemical evolution from a collapsing molecular cloud (a pre-stellar core) to a protostar and circumstellar disk. The…
Nine lectures reviewing the astrophysics of dust in interstellar clouds. Topics include: (1) Summary of observational evidence concerning interstellar dust: broadband extinction, scattering of starlight, polarization of starlight,…
Increasingly sophisticated observational tools and techniques are now being developed for probing the nature of interstellar turbulence. At the same time, theoretical advances in understanding the nature of turbulence and its effects on the…
In star forming regions, we can observe different evolutionary stages of various objects and phenomena such as molecular clouds, protostellar jets and outflows, circumstellar disks, and protostars. However, it is difficult to directly…
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…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Current observational results in our galaxy provide a complex physical and chemical…
Convection and turbulence in stellar atmospheres have a significant effect on the emergent flux from late-type stars. The theoretical advancements in convection modelling over recent years have proved challenging for the observers to obtain…
Stars form within molecular clouds but our understanding of this fundamental process remains hampered by the complexity of the physics that drives their evolution. We review our observational and theoretical knowledge of molecular clouds…
The embedded phase of star formation is the crucial phase where most of the stellar mass is assembled. Velocity-resolved spectra reveal an infalling envelope, bipolar outflows, and perhaps an infant circumstellar disk -- all locked together…
This article gives an overview of the constitution, physical conditions and observables of dust in the interstellar medium of nearby galaxies. We first review the macroscopic, spatial distribution of dust in these objects, and its…
We investigate the role of mass infall in the formation and evolution of protostars. To avoid ad hoc initial and boundary conditions, we consider the infall resulting self-consistently from modeling the formation of stellar clusters in…
We have coupled a chemical model with two dynamical models of collapsing low mass star-forming cores to predict abundances across the core of the commonly used infall tracers, CS and HCO$^+$, at various stages of the collapse. The models…
A major limitation and a continuing source of confusion in the interpretation of molecular line observations has been the large degree of chemical complexity that is observed in star-forming molecular cores. The past decade has seen…
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…
We consider current state of star formation theory and requirements to observations in millimeter and submillimeter ranges which are necessary for resolution of the most actual problems of the physics of star formation. Two key features of…