Related papers: Star Formation in Turbulent Interstellar Gas
The spatial range for feedback from star formation varies from molecular cloud disruption on parsec scales to supershells and disk blowout on kiloparsec scales. The relative amounts of energy and momentum given to these scales is important…
Understanding star formation is problematic as it originates in the large scale dynamics of a galaxy but occurs on the small scale of an individual star forming event. This paper presents the first numerical simulations to resolve the star…
The process of star formation in interstellar molecular clouds is believed to be controlled by driven supersonic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. We suggest that in the inertial range such turbulence obeys the Kolmogorov law, while in 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…
It has been known for more than 30 years that star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) is slow, in the sense that only ~1% of the gas forms stars every free-fall time. This result is entirely independent of any particular model of…
The formation of massive stellar clusters in turbulent molecular clouds is investigated. We include artificial star formation and energy feedback of newly born stars. The obtained systems are not likely to survive. Case studies to determine…
Star formation rates in the centers of disk galaxies often vastly exceed those at larger radii. We investigate the idea that these central starbursts are self-regulated, with the momentum flux injected to the ISM by star formation balancing…
Observational advances over the last decade reveal that star formation is associated with the simultaneous presence of gravitationally collapsing gas, bipolar outflow, and an accretion disk. Two theoretical views of star formation suppose…
The transport of magnetic flux to outside of collapsing molecular clouds is a required step to allow the formation of stars. Although ambipolar diffusion is often regarded as a key mechanism for that, it has been recently argued that it may…
In this chapter we review recent advances in understanding the roles that magnetic fields play throughout the star formation process, gained through observations and simulations of molecular clouds, the dense, star-forming phase of the…
All stars are born in molecular clouds, and most in giant molecular clouds (GMCs), which thus set the star formation activity of galaxies. We first review their observed properties, including measures of mass surface density, Sigma, and…
We investigate turbulent gas motions in spiral galaxies and their importance to star formation in far outer disks, where the column density is typically far below the critical value for spontaneous gravitational collapse. Following the…
Stars generally form faster than the ambipolar diffusion time, suggesting that several processes short circuit the delay and promote a rapid collapse. These processes are considered here, including turbulence compression in the outer parts…
We analyse extinction maps of nearby Giant Molecular Clouds to forge a link between driving processes of turbulence and modes of star formation. Our investigation focuses on cloud structure in the column density range above the self…
We review how supersonic turbulence can both prevent and promote the collapse of molecular clouds into stars. First we show that decaying turbulence cannot significantly delay collapse under conditions typical of molecular clouds,…
We present numerical evidence of dynamic star formation in which the accreted stellar mass grows superlinearly with time, roughly as $t^2$. We perform simulations of star formation in self-gravitating hydrodynamic and magneto-hydrodynamic…
We review the main results from recent numerical simulations of turbulent fragmentation and star formation. Specifically, we discuss the observed scaling relationships, the ``quiescent'' (subsonic) nature of many star-forming cores, their…
We study the galactic-scale triggering of star formation. We find that the largest mass-scale not stabilized by rotation, a well defined quantity in a rotating system and with clear dynamical meaning, strongly correlates with the star…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
Over the past decade increasingly robust estimates of the dense molecular gas content in galaxy populations between redshift 0 and the peak of cosmic galaxy/star formation from redshift 1-3 have become available. This rapid progress has…