Related papers: Turbulent Fragmentation and Star Formation
We investigate the formation of protostellar clusters during the collapse of dense molecular cloud cores with a focus on the evolution of potential and kinetic energy, the degree of substructure, and the early phase of mass segregation. Our…
We test the hypothesis that the starless cores may be gravitationally bound clouds supported largely by thermal pressure by comparing observed molecular line spectra to theoretical spectra produced by a simulation that includes…
Observational evidence from local star-forming regions mandates that star formation occurs shortly after, or even during, molecular cloud formation. Models of the formation of molecular clouds in large-scale converging flows have identified…
Fragmentation of bubbles and droplets in turbulence produces a dispersed phase spanning a broad range of scales, encompassing everything from droplets in nanoemulsions to centimeter-sized bubbles entrained in breaking waves. Along with…
Understanding the formation of stars in galaxies is central to much of modern astrophysics. For several decades it has been thought that stellar birth is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity and magnetostatic support,…
Three-dimensional (3D), time dependent numerical simulations, of flow of matter in stars, now have sufficient resolution to be fully turbulent. The late stages of the evolution of massive stars, leading up to core collapse to a neutron star…
This two-part review summarizes interstellar turbulence and its implications. The first part begins with diagnostics and energy sources. Turbulence theory is considered in detail, including the basic fluid equations, solenoidal and…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
The fragmentation of gas to form stars in molecular clouds is intrinsically linked to the turbulence within them. These internal motions are set at the birth of the cloud and may vary with galactic environment and as the cloud evolves. In…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of star clusters during their formation, assuming that they are born from a turbulent starless clump of a given mass that is embedded within a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a…
Binary stars produce an array of dramatic astrophysical phenomena. They allow us to probe stellar structure, nuclear physics, and gravitational wave physics. They also produce the powerful supernovae that allow us to measure the scale of…
Most stars in the Galaxy are believed to be formed within star clusters from collapsing molecular clouds. However, the complete process of star formation, from the parent cloud to a gas-free star cluster, is still poorly understood. We…
Turbulence, self-gravity, and cooling convert most of the interstellar medium into cloudy structures that form stars. Turbulence compresses the gas into clouds directly and it moves pre-existing clouds around passively when there are…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
We use numerical simulations of turbulent cluster-forming regions to study the nature of dense filamentary structures in star formation. Using four hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulations chosen to match observations, we identify…
For a number of starless cores, self-absorbed molecular line and column density observations have implied the presence of large-amplitude oscillations. We examine the consequences of these oscillations on the evolution of the cores and the…
We report on the results of the first 3D SPH simulation of massive, gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disks with radiative transfer. We adopt a flux-limited diffusion scheme justified by the high opacity of most of the disk. The…
Fragmentation in a gravitationally unstable accretion disk can be an important pathway for forming stellar/planetary companions. To characterize quantitatively the condition for and outcome of fragmentation under realistic thermodynamics,…
Fragmentation of filaments into dense cores is thought to be an important step in forming stars. The bar-mode instability of spherically collapsing cores found in previous linear analysis invokes a possibility of re-fragmentation of the…
Some scenarios for planetesimal formation go through a phase of collapse of gravitationally bound clouds of mm-cm-sized pebbles. Such clouds can form for example through the streaming instability in protoplanetary disks. We model the…