Related papers: (Sub-)mm interferometry in massive star-forming re…
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…
Modern optical spectrographs and optical interferometers push the limits in the spectral and spatial regime, providing important new tools for the exploration of the universe. In this contribution I outline the complementary nature of…
The onset of massive star formation is not well understood because of observational and theoretical difficulties. To find the dense and cold clumps where massive star formation can take place, we compiled a sample of high infrared…
How a star forms is a fundamental question in astrophysics. In the earliest stages of protostellar evolution high extinction prevents a direct study of the accretion processes and their temporal evolution. Monitoring the variations of the…
The last decade has witnessed significant advances in our observational understanding of the earliest stages of low-mass star formation. The advent of sensitive receivers on large radio telescopes such as the JCMT and IRAM 30m MRT has led…
We summarize the status of our program of near-infrared adaptive optics observations of ultracompact HII regions. By means of selected results we demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for disentangling the complexity of massive…
Interferometry is one of the most powerful experimental tools of modern astrophysics. Some of its methods are considered in view of potential applicability to studies of correlations in multiparticle dynamics.
Investigations into the substructure of massive star forming regions are essential for understanding the observed relationships between core mass distributions and mass distributions in stellar clusters, differentiating between proposed…
This paper reviews the chemistry of star-forming regions, with an emphasis on the formation of high-mass stars. We first outline the basic molecular processes in dense clouds, their implementation in chemical models, and techniques to…
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…
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…
The formation of supermassive stars is believed to be an essential intermediate step for the formation of the massive black hole seeds that become the supermassive black holes powering the quasars observed in the early Universe. Numerical…
This paper describes a key submillimetre survey which we are currently conducting to address some of the outstanding questions in cosmology - how, at what epoch and over what period of time did massive galaxies form at high redshift? A…
This paper will review the technical progress of interferometric infrared observing techniques from the first 2-element interferometer 25 years ago to the 3+ element arrays now coming into service. To date, only the Infrared Spatial…
The apparent size of stars is a crucial benchmark for fundamental stellar properties such as effective temperatures, radii and surface gravities. While interferometric measurements of stellar angular diameters are the most direct method to…
The understanding and modeling of the structure and evolution of stars is based on statistical physics as well as on hydrodynamics. Today, a precise identification and proper description of the physical processes at work in stellar…
Formation processes of high-mass stars have been long-standing issues in astronomy and astrophysics. This is mainly because of major difficulties in observational studies such as a smaller number of high-mass young stellar objects (YSOs),…
Massive star formation exhibits an extremely rich chemistry. However, not much evolutionary details are known yet, especially at high spatial resolution. Therefore, we synthesize previously published Submillimeter Array…
Sometimes the early star formation can be found in cold and dense molecular clouds, such as infrared dark cloud (IRDC). Considering star formation often occurs in clustered condition, HII regions may be triggering a new generation of star…
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…