Related papers: Massive star formation: Nurture, not nature
Understanding how galaxies form and evolve is at the heart of modern astronomy. With the advent of large-scale surveys and simulations, remarkable progress has been made in the last few decades. Despite this, the physical processes behind…
We briefly review the recent numerical works that have been performed to understand the formation of massive stars. After a brief description of the classical works, we review more specifically $i)$ the problem of building stars more…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
In a Lambda CDM Universe, galaxies grow in mass both through star formation and through addition of already-formed stars in galaxy mergers. Because of this partial decoupling of these two modes of galaxy growth, I discuss each separately in…
Star clusters have hierarchical patterns in space and time, suggesting formation processes in the densest regions of a turbulent interstellar medium. Clusters also have hierarchical substructure when they are young, which makes them all…
Context: Starbursts, and particularly their high-mass stars, play an essential role in the evolution of galaxies. The winds of massive stars not only significantly influence their surroundings, but the mass loss also profoundly affects the…
This article presents recent work to constrain the physical and chemical properties in high-mass star formation based largely on interferometric high-spatial-resolution continuum and spectral line studies at (sub)mm wavelengths. After…
Most stars form as part of a star cluster. The most massive clusters in the Milky Way exist in two groups - loose and compact clusters - with significantly different sizes at the end of the star formation process. After their formation both…
Cosmological simulations of galaxy formation appear to show a two-phase character with a rapid early phase at z>2 during which in-situ stars are formed within the galaxy from infalling cold gas followed by an extended phase since z<3 during…
Within the birth environment of a massive globular cluster, the combination of a luminous young stellar population and a high column density induces a state in which the thermal optical depth and radiation pressure are both appreciable. In…
Selected results from recent studies of star formation in galaxies at different stages of interaction are reviewed. Recent results from the Spitzer Space Telescope are highlighted. Ideas on how large-scale driving of star formation in…
Star formation has often been studied by separating the low- and high-mass regimes with an approximate boundary at 8M_sun. While some of the outcomes of the star-formation process are different between the two regimes, it is less clear…
Most stars form in dense star clusters deeply embedded in residual gas. These objects must therefore be seen as the fundamental building blocks of galaxies. With this contribution some physical processes that act in the very early and also…
Mass segregation in star clusters is often thought to indicate the onset of energy equipartition, where the most massive stars impart kinetic energy to the lower-mass stars and brown dwarfs/free floating planets. The predicted net result of…
Using studies of nearby star formation with Spitzer, I will argue that star formation is restricted to dense cores within molecular clouds. The nature of these dense cores and their connection to star formation will be discussed. Their…
Large numbers of young stars are formed in merging galaxies, such as the Antennae galaxies. Most of these stars are formed in compact star clusters (i.e., super star clusters), which have been the focus of a large number of studies.…
Massive stars are key players in the evolution of galaxies, yet their formation pathway remains unclear. In this work, we use data from several galaxy-wide surveys to build an unbiased dataset of ~700 massive young stellar objects (MYSOs),…
(Abridged) The building blocks of galaxies are star clusters. These form with low-star formation efficiencies and, consequently, loose a large part of their stars that expand outwards once the residual gas is expelled by the action of the…
In this contribution, our knowledge of the initial conditions under which massive star formation takes place is reviewed. Massive stars are born in massive clumps of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), hence first the properties of GMCs are…
The process of chemical self-enrichment in stellar systems can be affected by the total mass of the system and the conditions of the large-scale environment. Globular clusters are a special dark matter-free case of chemical evolution, in…