Related papers: Radiation Feedback and Fragmentation in Massive Pr…
The hypothesis that massive stars form by accretion can be investigated by simple analytical calculations that describe the effect that the formation of a massive star has on its own accretion flow. Within a simple accretion model that…
The accretion phase of star formation is investigated in magnetically-dominated clouds that have an initial subcritical mass-to-flux ratio. We employ nonideal magnetohydrodynamic simulations that include ambipolar diffusion and ohmic…
Improving our understanding of the earliest stages of star formation is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. We discuss recent advances made in this area thanks to detailed…
Sufficiently massive clumps of molecular gas collapse under self-gravity and fragment to spawn a cluster of stars that have a range of masses. We investigate observationally the early stages of formation of a stellar cluster in a massive…
The formation mechanism of massive stars remains one of the main open problems in astrophysics, in particular the relationship between the mass of the most massive stars, and that of the cores in which they form. Numerical simulations of…
Low-mass protostars may accrete most of their material through short-lived episodes of rapid disk accretion; yet until recently evolutionary tracks for these protostars assumed only constant or slowly-varying accretion. Important initial…
We study numerically the evolution of rotating cloud cores, from the collapse of a magnetically supercritical core to the formation of a protostar and the development of a protostellar disk during the main accretion phase. We find that the…
We consider the radiative feedback processes that operate during the formation of the first stars, including the photodissociation of H_2, Ly-alpha radiation pressure, formation and expansion of an HII region, and disk photoevaporation.…
We propose that supermassive stars may form in quasar accretion disks, and we discuss possible observational consequences. The structure and stability of very massive stars are reviewed. Because of high accretion rates, quasar disks are…
We present a detailed computational study of the assembly of protostellar disks and massive stars in molecular clouds with supersonic turbulence. We follow the evolution of large scale filamentary structures in a cluster-forming clump down…
Radiative feedback from populations II stars played a vital role in early structure formation. Particularly, photons below the Lyman limit can escape the star forming regions and produce a background ultraviolet (UV) flux which consequently…
Initial conditions for star formation in clusters are estimated for protostars whose masses follow the initial mass function (IMF) from 0.05 to 10 solar masses. Star-forming infall is assumed equally likely to stop at any moment, due to gas…
Even today in our Galaxy, stars form from gas cores in a variety of environments, which may affect the properties of resulting star and planetary systems. Here we study the role of pressure, parameterized via ambient clump mass surface…
Population III stars forming in minihalos tend to be relatively inefficient, with each minihalo hosting one or a small number of stars which are more massive than local stars but still challenging to observe directly at high redshift. Here…
Protostars grow in mass by accreting material through their discs, and this accretion is initially their main source of luminosity. The resulting radiative feedback heats the environments of young protostars, and may thereby suppress…
The origin of supermassive black holes (with $\gtrsim\!10^9\,M_{\odot}$) in the early universe (redshift $z \sim 7$) remains poorly understood. Gravitational collapse of a massive primordial gas cloud is a promising initial process, but…
We present a set of 3-dimensional, radiation-magnetohydrodynamic calculations of the gravitational collapse of massive (300 Msun), star-forming molecular cloud cores. We show that the combined effects of magnetic fields and radiative…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
The evolution of radiation emitted during the dynamical collapse of metal-free protostellar clouds is investigated within a spherically symmetric hydrodynamical scheme that includes the transfer of radiation and the chemistry of the…
The mechanisms which could lead to chemo-thermal instabilities and fragmentation during the formation of primordial protostars are investigated analytically. We introduce approximations for H2 cooling rates bridging the optically thin and…