Related papers: Clustered Massive Star Formation in Molecular Clou…
At the earliest evolutionary stages, massive star-forming regions are deeply embedded within their natal cores and not observable at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Interferometric high-spatial resolution mm dust continuum…
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…
The formation environment of stars in massive stellar clusters is similar to the environment of stars forming in galaxies at a redshift of 1 - 3, at the peak star formation rate density of the Universe. As massive clusters are still forming…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
We present a theoretical model for primordial star formation. First we describe the structure of the initial gas cores as virialized, quasi-hydrostatic objects in accord with recent high resolution numerical studies. The accretion rate can…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
We use direct N-body simulations of gas embedded star clusters to study the importance of stellar collisions for the formation and mass accretion history of high-mass stars. Our clusters start in virial equilibrium as a mix of gas and…
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…
Star formation within the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) may be intimately linked to the orbital dynamics of the gas. Recent models suggest that star formation within the dust ridge molecular clouds (from G0.253+0.016 to Sgr B2) follows an…
The physical mechanism that allows massive stars to form is a major unsolved problem in astrophysics. Stars with masses $\gtsim 20$ $\msun$ reach the main sequence while still embedded in their natal clouds, and the immense radiation output…
We briefly describe the three existing scenarios for forming massive stars and emphasize that the arguments often used to reject the accretion scenario for massive stars are misleading. It is usually not accounted for the fact that the…
The similarity between the mass and spatial distributions of pre-stellar gas cores in star-forming clouds and young stars in clusters provides strong circumstantial evidence that these gas cores are the direct progenitors of individual…
We describe results from a fully self-consistent three dimensional hydrodynamical simulation of the formation of one of the first stars in the Universe. Dark matter dominated pre-galactic objects form because of gravitational instability…
The formation of massive stars is an outstanding problem in stellar evolution. However, it is expected that they are (predominantly) born in heirarchical environments within massive young clusters, which in turn are located within larger…
The process that leads to the formation and early evolution of low-mass stars is in a broad sense well understood theoretically and carefully traced observationally. The largest uncertainties in this framework reside in the poorly known…
Analyzing global starburst properties in various kinds of starburst and post-starburst galaxies and relating them to the properties of the star cluster populations they form, I explore the conditions for the formation of massive, compact,…
Rest-frame optical observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered a population of massive galaxies, exceeding $10^{10}$ solar masses, present less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The large stellar masses of…
The concept that stars form in the modern era began some 60 years ago with the key observation of expanding OB associations. Now we see that these associations are an intermediate scale in a cascade of hierarchical structures that begins on…
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…
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,…