Related papers: Turbulence and galactic structure
Star formation depends on the available gaseous "fuel" as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition…
Galaxy interactions and mergers play a significant, but still debated and poorly understood role in the star formation history of galaxies. Numerical and theoretical models cannot yet explain the main properties of merger-induced…
The driving of turbulence in galaxies is deeply connected with the physics of feedback, star formation, outflows, accretion, and radial transport in disks. The velocity dispersion of gas in galaxies therefore offers a promising…
Supersonic turbulence fragments the interstellar medium into dense sheets, filaments, cores and large low density voids. The turbulence is driven on large scales, probably predominantly by supernovae. The scaling properties of supersonic…
The gas component plays a major role in the dynamics of spiral galaxies, because of its dissipative character, and its ability to exchange angular momentum with stars in the disk. Due to its small velocity dispersion, it triggers…
Star clusters are known to be formed in turbulent molecular clouds. How turbulence is driven in molecular clouds and what effect this has on star formation is still unclear. We compare a simulation setup with turbulent driving everywhere in…
Recent observations of high-redshift galaxies ($z \lesssim 7$) reveal that a substantial fraction have turbulent, gas-rich disks with well-ordered rotation and elevated levels of star formation. In some instances, disks show evidence of…
Spiral shocks are potentially a major source of turbulence in the interstellar medium. To address this problem quantitatively, we use numerical simulations to investigate gas flow across spiral arms in vertically stratified,…
The turbulent motion within molecular clouds is a key factor controlling star formation. Turbulence supports molecular cloud cores from evolving to gravitational collapse and hence sets a lower bound on the size of molecular cloud cores in…
The role of disk instabilities, such as bars and spiral arms, and the associated resonances, in growing bulges in the inner regions of disk galaxies have long been studied in the low-redshift nearby Universe. There it has long been probed…
We review the properties of turbulent molecular clouds (MCs), focusing on the physical processes that influence star formation (SF). MC formation appears to occur during large-scale compression of the diffuse ISM driven by supernovae,…
High redshift disc galaxies are more gas rich, clumpier, and more turbulent than local Universe galaxies. This early era of galaxy formation imprints the distribution and kinematics of the stars that we observe today, but it is not yet well…
Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass from the surrounding cloud material. Molecular cloud regions without turbulent driving sources, or where turbulence is driven…
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…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
Star formation is inefficient. Only a few percent of the available gas in molecular clouds forms stars, leading to the observed low star formation rate (SFR). The same holds when averaged over many molecular clouds, such that the SFR of…
Frequent supernova explosions in compact starburst regions are a main shaper of these regions' interstellar media (ISM). In most starbursts, the supernova remnants blast open a hot phase that fills the regions and launches a superwind.…
Both simulations and observations have shown that turbulence is a pervasive phenomenon in cosmic scenarios, yet it is particularly difficult to model numerically due to its intrinsically multiscale character which demands high resolutions.…
Galactic disks consist of both stars and gas. The gas is more dynamically responsive than the stars, and strongly nonlinear structures and velocities can develop in the ISM even while stellar surface density perturbations remain…
Understanding the physics of how stars form is a highly-prioritized goal of modern Astrophysics, in part because star formation is linked to both galactic dynamics on large scales and to the formation of planets on small scales. It is…