Related papers: Threshold between Spontaneous and Cloud-Collisiona…
We invoke star formation triggered by cloud-cloud collisions to explain global star formation rates of disk galaxies and circumnuclear starbursts. Previous theories based on the growth rate of gravitational perturbations ignore the…
In this paper we investigate the level of star formation activity within nearby molecular clouds. We employ a uniform set of infrared extinction maps to provide accurate assessments of cloud mass and structure and compare these with…
Star formation is one of the key factors that shapes galaxies. This process is relatively well understood from both simulations and observations on a small "local" scale of individual giant molecular clouds and also on a "global"…
Studies by Lada (2010) and Heiderman (2010) have suggested that star formation mostly occurs above a threshold in gas surface density Sigma of Sigma_c = 120 Msun pc^{-2} (A_K = 0.8). Heiderman infer a threshold by combining low-mass…
We investigate the relationship between the star formation rate per unit area and the surface density of the ISM (the local Kennicutt-Schmitt law) using a simplified model of the ISM and a simple estimate of the star formation rate based on…
We present an analytical model of the relation between the surface density of gas and star formation rate in galaxies and clouds, as a function of the presence of supersonic turbulence and the associated structure of the interstellar…
We study global star formation thresholds in the outer parts of galaxies by investigating the stability of disk galaxies embedded in dark halos. The disks are self-gravitating, contain metals and dust, and are exposed to UV radiation. We…
We study effect of magnetic field on massive dense core formation in colliding unequal molecular clouds by performing magnetohydrodynamic simulations with sub-parsec resolution (0.015 pc) that can resolve the molecular cores. Initial clouds…
(Abridged). We model gravitational instability in a wide range of isolated disk galaxies, using GADGET, a three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics code. The model galaxies include a dark matter halo and a disk of stars and…
We present the results of a numerical study designed to address the question of whether there is a column density threshold for star formation within molecular clouds. We have simulated a large number of different clouds, with volume and…
Newborn stars form within the localized, high density regions of molecular clouds. The sequence and rate at which stars form in dense clumps and the dependence on local and global environments are key factors in developing descriptions of…
We have combined Halpha and recent high resolution CO(J=1-0) data to consider the quantitative relation between gas mass and star formation rate, or the so-called Schmidt law in nearby spiral galaxies at regions of high molecular density.…
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…
Empirical star formation laws from the last 20 years are reviewed with a comparison to simulations. The current form in main galaxy disks has a linear relationship between the star formation rate per unit area and the molecular cloud mass…
We compile observations of the surface mass density profiles of dense stellar systems, including globular clusters in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, massive star clusters in nearby starbursts, nuclear star clusters in dwarf spheroidals…
We study giant molecular cloud (GMC) collisions and their ability to trigger star cluster formation. We further develop our three dimensional magnetized, turbulent, colliding GMC simulations by implementing star formation sub-grid models.…
We analyse extinction maps of nearby Giant Molecular Clouds to forge a link between driving processes of turbulence and modes of star formation. Our investigation focuses on cloud structure in the column density range above the self…
Understanding star formation is problematic as it originates in the large scale dynamics of a galaxy but occurs on the small scale of an individual star forming event. This paper presents the first numerical simulations to resolve the star…
The Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relationship between the surface density of the star formation rate (SFR) and the gas surface density has three distinct power laws that may result from one model in which gas collapses at a fixed fraction of the…
A large fraction of the gas in the Galaxy is cold, dense, and molecular. If all this gas collapsed under the influence of gravity and formed stars in a local free-fall time, the star formation rate in the Galaxy would exceed that observed…