Related papers: Radiation Feedback and Fragmentation in Massive Pr…
The intrinsic luminosity of young Jupiters is of high interest for planet formation theory. It is an observable quantity that is determined by important physical mechanisms during formation, namely the accretion shock structure, and even…
We present results from our numerical simulations of collapsing massive molecular cloud cores. These numerical calculations show that massive stars assemble quickly with mass accretion rates exceeding 10^-3 Msol/yr and confirm that the mass…
We investigate the ab-initio formation of super-massive stars in a pristine atomic cooling halo. The halo is extracted from a larger self-consistent parent simulation. The halo remains metal-free and star formation is suppressed due to a…
The formation of massive stars in close binary systems is complicated due to their high radiation pressure, the crowded environment and the expected minimum separation for fragmentation being many times greater than the orbital separation.…
The isothermal gravitational collapse and fragmentation of a region within a molecular cloud and the subsequent formation of a protostellar cluster is investigated numerically. The clump mass spectrum which forms during the fragmentation…
The collapse of massive molecular clumps can produce high mass stars, but the evolution is not simply a scaled-up version of low mass star formation. Outflows and radiative effects strongly hinder the formation of massive stars via…
The first stars fundamentally transformed the early universe by emitting the first light and by producing the first heavy elements. These effects were predetermined by the mass distribution of the first stars, which is thought to have been…
The fragmentation process of primordial-gas cores during prestellar collapse is studied using three-dimensional nested-grid hydrodynamics. Starting from the initial central number density of n \sim10^3 cm^-3, we follow the evolution of…
I review the status of massive star formation theories: accretion from collapsing, massive, turbulent cores; competitive accretion; and stellar collisions. I conclude the observational and theoretical evidence favors the first of these…
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…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of protostellar collapse is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. Observationally, there are two…
The formation and evolution of the circumstellar disk in unmagnetized molecular clouds is investigated using three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations from the prestellar core until the end of the main accretion phase. In collapsing…
We investigate the physical processes which lead to the formation of massive stars. Using a numerical simulation of the formation of a stellar cluster from a turbulent molecular cloud, we evaluate the relevant contributions of fragmentation…
In the core accretion model of giant planet formation, a solid protoplanetary core begins to accrete gas directly from the nebula when its mass reaches about 5 earth masses. The protoplanet has at most a few million years to reach runaway…
Like their lower mass siblings, massive protostars can be expected to: a) be surrounded by circumstellar disks and b) launch magnetically-driven jets and outflows. The disk formation and global evolution is thereby controlled by advection…
We present simulation results for the formation and long-term evolution of a primordial protostellar disk harbored by a first star. Using a 2+1D nonaxisymmetric thin disk numerical simulation, together with a barotropic relation for 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…
Theory predicts and observations confirm that low-mass stars (like the Sun) in their early life grow by accreting gas from the surrounding material. But for stars ~ 10 times more massive than the Sun (~10 M_sun), the powerful stellar…
We present coupled stellar evolution (SE) and 3D radiation-hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of the evolution of primordial protostars, their immediate environment, and the dynamic accretion history under the influence of stellar ionizing and…
Massive stars influence the surrounding universe far out of proportion to their numbers through ionizing radiation, supernova explosions, and heavy element production. Their formation requires the collapse of massive interstellar gas clouds…