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Related papers: Molecular Cloud Turbulence and Star Formation

200 papers

The observed rapid onset of star formation in molecular clouds requires rapid formation of dense fragments which can collapse individually before being overtaken by global gravitationally-driven flows. Many previous investigations have…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 F. Heitsch , L. Hartmann , A. Burkert , ;

Star formation is one of the least understood processes in cosmic evolution. It is difficult to formulate a general theory for star formation in part because of the wide range of physical processes involved. The interstellar gas out of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-27 Mark R. Krumholz

Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-01-27 Bruce G. Elmegreen

We present preliminary numerical evidence that the physical conditions in high-mass star forming regions can arise from global gravitational infall, with the velocity dispersions being caused primarily by infall motions rather than random…

In this paper, we review some of the properties of dense molecular cloud cores. The results presented here rely on three-dimensional numerical simulations of isothermal, magnetized, turbulent, and self-gravitating molecular clouds (MCs) in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-08-29 Sami Dib , Roberto Galvan-Madrid , Jongsoo Kim , Enrique Vazquez-Semadeni

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-09-28 Jamie D. Smith , James E. Dale , Sarah E. Jaffa , Martin G. H. Krause

Context. Supersonic disordered flows accompany the formation and evolution of MCs. It has been argued that turbulence can support against gravitational collapse and form hierarchical sub-structures. Aims. We study the time evolution of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-10-02 Roxana-Adela Chira , Juan~Camilo Ibáñez-Mejía , Mordecai-Mark Mac Low , Thomas Henning

Molecular Cloud Complexes (MCCs) are highly structured and ``turbulent''. Observational evidence suggests that MCCs are dynamically dominated systems, rather than quasi-equilibrium entities. The observed structure is more likely a…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 F. Heitsch , A. D. Slyz , J. E. G. Devriendt , L. W. Hartmann , A. Burkert

Young massive clusters (YMCs) are recently formed astronomical objects with unusually high star formation rates. We propose the collision of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) as a likely formation mechanism of YMCs, consistent with the YMC…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-09-30 K. Y. Liow , C. L. Dobbs

We present high-resolution ($\sim$ 0.1 pc), hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations to investigate whether the observed level of molecular cloud (MC) turbulence can be generated and maintained by external supernova (SN)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-03-28 D. Seifried , S. Walch , S. Haid , P. Girichidis , T. Naab

Properties of candidate stars, forming out of molecular clouds, depend on the ambient conditions of the parent cloud. We present a series of 2D and 3D simulations of fragmentation of molecular clouds in starburst regions as well as clouds…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2014-11-20 S. Hocuk , M. Spaans

Molecular clouds are observed to be turbulent, but the origin of this turbulence is not well understood. As a result, there are two different approaches to simulating molecular clouds, one in which the turbulence is allowed to decay after…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Stella S. R. Offner , Richard I. Klein , Christopher F. McKee

The fragmentation of molecular clouds (MC) into protostellar cores is a central aspect of the process of star formation. Because of the turbulent nature of super-sonic motions in MCs, it has been suggested that dense structures such as…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Paolo Padoan , Mika Juvela , Alyssa A. Goodman , AAke Nordlund

Recent observations suggest that intensive molecular cloud collision can trigger massive star/cluster formation. The most important physical process caused by the collision is a shock compression. In this paper, the influence of a shock…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-08-07 Tsuyoshi Inoue , Patrick Hennebelle , Yasuo Fukui , Tomoaki Matsumoto , Kazunari Iwasaki , Shu-ichiro Inutsuka

Molecular clouds are prime locations to study the process of star formation. These clouds contain filamentary structures and cores, which are crucial sites for the formation of young stars. The star-formation process has been investigated…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-03-01 Archana Soam , Chakali Eswaraiah , Amit Seta , Lokesh Dewangan , Maheswar G

We investigate the formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in a Milky-Way-like disk galaxy with a flat rotation curve. We perform a series of 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations that follow both the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-07-22 Elizabeth J. Tasker , Jonathan C. Tan

We present a steady-state analytical model for pressure-regulated formation of molecular clouds (MC) and stars (SF) in gaseous galactic disks and apply it to the Milky Way (MW). MC formation depends on midplane interstellar pressure…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-06 José Franco , Aldo Rodríguez-Puebla , Javier Ballesteros-Paredes , Manuel Zamora-Avilez

We performed sub-parsec (~0.06pc) scale simulations of two idealised molecular clouds with different masses undergoing a collision. Gas clumps with density greater than 1e-20 g/cm3 (0.3e4 cm-3) were identified as pre-stellar cores and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-22 Ken Takahira , Elizabeth J. Tasker , Asao Habe

We examine the physical parameters that affect the accumulation of gas in molecular clouds to high column densities where the formation of stars takes place. In particular, we analyze the dense gas mass fraction (DGMF) in a set of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-15 Jouni Kainulainen , Christoph Federrath , Thomas Henning

Stars form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest and most massive…