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Thermal instability (TI) is a trigger mechanism, which can explain the formation of small condensations through some regions of the interstellar clouds. The instability criterion for flat geometry approximations has been investigated in…
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…
Turbulence is ubiquitous in the insterstellar medium and plays a major role in several processes such as the formation of dense structures and stars, the stability of molecular clouds, the amplification of magnetic fields, and the…
We discuss the nature of the velocity dispersion vs. size relation for molecular clouds. In particular, we add to previous observational results showing that the velocity dispersions in molecular clouds and cores are not purely functions of…
The existence of substellar cold H2 globules in planetary nebulae and the mere existence of comets suggest that the physics of cold interstellar gas might be much richer than usually envisioned. We study the case of a cold gaseous medium in…
Most stars are born in the gaseous proto-cluster environment. The knowledge of this intermediate stage gives more accurate constraints on star formation characteristics. We demonstrate that a virialized globally supported structure, in…
The universality of interstellar turbulence is examined from observed structure functions of 27 giant molecular clouds and Monte Carlo modeling. We show that the structure functions, dv=v0 l^gamma, derived from wide field imaging of CO…
We investigate the role of tidal forces in molecular cloud formation by examining how apparent boundedness, as diagnosed by the classical virial parameter, relates to the actual gravitational state of clouds subject to tidal forces from…
"The purpose of numerical models is not numbers but insight." (Hamming) In the spirit of this adage, and of Don Cox's approach to scientific speaking, we discuss the questions that the latest generation of numerical models of the…
The role of turbulent fragmentation in regulating the efficiency of star formation in interstellar clouds is examined from new wide field imaging of 12CO and 13CO J=1-0 emission from the Rosette and G216-2.5 molecular clouds. The Rosette…
The ambipolar-diffusion theory of star formation predicts the formation of fragments in molecular clouds with mass-to-flux ratios greater than that of the parent-cloud envelope. By contrast, scenarios of turbulence-induced fragmentation do…
We discuss star formation in the turbulent interstellar medium. We argue that morphological appearance and dynamical evolution of the gas is primarily determined by supersonic turbulence, and that stars form via a process we call…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
This two-part review summarizes interstellar turbulence and its implications. The first part begins with diagnostics and energy sources. Turbulence theory is considered in detail, including the basic fluid equations, solenoidal and…
We review recent results from numerical simulations and related models of MHD turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM) and in molecular clouds. We discuss the implications of turbulence for the processes of cloud formation and evolution,…
How molecular clouds fragment and create the dense structures which go on to form stars is an open question. We investigate the relative importance of different energy terms (kinetic, thermal, magnetic, and gravity - both self-gravity and…
We review the main results from recent numerical simulations of turbulent fragmentation and star formation. Specifically, we discuss the observed scaling relationships, the ``quiescent'' (subsonic) nature of many star-forming cores, their…
The analysis of WMAP and Planck CMB data has shown the presence of temperature asymmetries towards the halos of several galaxies, which is probably due to the rotation of clouds present in these halos about the rotational axis of the…
In order to investigate the origin of the interstellar turbulence, detailed observations in the CO J=1--0 and 3--2 lines have been carried out in an interacting region of a molecular cloud with an HII region. As a result, several 1,000 to…
We apply gravity-based and density-based methods to identify clouds in numerical simulations of the star-forming, three-phase interstellar medium (ISM), and compare their properties and their global correlation with the star formation rate…