Related papers: Bow-shock induced star formation in the LMC?
Observations show that galaxies and their interstellar media are pervaded by strong magnetic fields with energies in the diffuse component being at least comparable to the thermal and even as large or larger than the turbulent energy. Such…
Nuclear stellar cluster (NSCs) are known to exist around massive black holes (MBHs) in galactic nuclei. Two formation scenarios were suggested for their origin: (1) Build-up of NSCs from consecutive infall of stellar cluster and (2)…
Using $N$-body simulations we study the buckling instability in a galactic bar forming in a Milky Way-like galaxy. The galaxy is initially composed of an axisymmetric, exponential stellar disk embedded in a spherical dark matter halo. The…
We investigate the role of rotational instabilities in the context of black hole formation in relativistic stars. In addition to the standard scenario - an axially symmetric dynamical instability forming a horizon at the star's center - the…
We present a detailed reconstruction of the star-formation history of the Constellation III region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, to constrain the formation mechanism of this enigmatic feature. Star formation in Constellation III seems to…
The Milky Way (MW) is our unique laboratory to test star formation theories at the level of individual stars, serving as the Rosetta Stone to interpret extragalactic observations. The proposed White Paper focuses on the following key…
These lectures attempt to expose the most important ideas, which have been proposed to explain the formation of stars with particular emphasis on the formation of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars. We first describe the important physical…
The halo of the Milky Way provides unique elemental abundance and kinematic information on the first objects to form in the Universe, which can be used to tightly constrain models of galaxy formation and evolution. Although the halo was…
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 nature and the location of the lenses discovered in the microlensing surveys done so far towards the LMC remain unclear. Motivated by these questions we computed the optical depth for the different intervening populations and the number…
Runaway stars are ejected from their formation sites well within molecular cores in giant dark clouds. Eventually, these stars can travel through the molecular clouds, which are highly inhomogeneous. The powerful winds of massive runaway…
Using a cosmological galactic evolutionary approach to model the Milky Way, we calculate the star formation history (SFH) of the solar neighborhood. The good agreement we obtain with the observational inferences suggests that our physical…
Stars and their kinematics provide one of the tools available for studies of the shapes of galaxies and their halos. In this review I focus on two specific applications: the shape of the Milky Way dark halo and the shape of the LMC disk.…
We derive general expressions for the LMC velocity field which we fit to kinematical data for 1041 carbon stars. We demonstrate that all previous studies of LMC kinematics have made unnecessary over-simplifications that have led to…
The cores of stars are the cosmic furnaces where light elements are fused into heavier nuclei. The fusion of hydrogen to helium initially powers all stars. The ashes of the fusion reactions are then predicted to serve as fuel in a series of…
The central regions of galaxies show the presence of massive black holes and/or dense stellar systems. The question about their modes of formation is still under debate. A likely explanation of the formation of the central dense stellar…
The four main findings about the age and abundance structure of the Milky Way bulge based on microlensed dwarf and subgiant stars are: (1) a wide metallicity distribution with distinct peaks at [Fe/H]=-1.09, -0.63, -0.20, +0.12, +0.41; (2)…
During their main sequence evolution, massive stars can develop convective regions very close to their surface. These regions are caused by an opacity peak associated with iron ionization. Cantiello et al. (2009) found a possible connection…
A new theoretical hypothesis on the origin and formation of the solar and extrasolar planetary systems is summarized and briefly discussed in the light of recent detections of extrasolar planets, and studies of shock wave interaction with…
We present the results from simulations of GMC formation in spiral galaxies. First we discuss cloud formation by cloud-cloud collisions, and gravitational instabilities, arguing that the former is prevalent at lower galactic surface…