Related papers: Clumpuscule Formation at High Redshift
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…
Sufficiently massive clumps of molecular gas collapse under self-gravity and fragment to spawn a cluster of stars that have a range of masses. We investigate observationally the early stages of formation of a stellar cluster in a massive…
The interstellar medium of galaxies is composed of multiple phases, including molecular, atomic, and ionized gas, as well as dust. Stars are formed within this medium from cold molecular gas clouds, which collapse due to their gravitational…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first bound objects mark the transition from a simple cooling universe -- described by just a few parameters -- to a very messy hot one -- the…
Dense, star-forming gas is believed to form at the stagnation points of large-scale ISM flows, but observational examples of this process in action are rare. We here present a giant molecular cloud (GMC) sandwiched between two colliding…
Evidence is summarized that suggests that when a protogalaxy collapses, a fraction $f$ of its gas fails to heat to the virial temperature, where $f$ is large for haloes less massive than the value $M^*$ associated with $L^*$ galaxies. Stars…
In young star clusters, the density can be high enough and the velocity dispersion low enough for stars to collide and merge with a significant probability. This has been suggested as a possible way to build up the high-mass portion of the…
We investigate the nature of star formation in gas-rich galaxies at $z > 7$ forming in a markedly overdense region, in the whereabouts of a massive virialized halo already exceeding $10^{12}$ M$_{\odot}$. We find that not only the primary…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are dense aggregates of young stars and are often speculated as potential precursors to globular clusters. However, the formation mechanism of massive and compact gas clumps that precede YMCs remains unknown.…
We explore the formation of massive high-redshift Population III (Pop III) galaxies through photoionization feedback. We consider dark matter halos formed from progenitors that have undergone no star formation as a result of early…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
Collisions and mergers of gas-rich galaxies trigger bursts of star and cluster formation. Of the thousands of clusters typically formed during a major merger, only the most massive and compact survive for Gigayears as globular clusters…
The conditions for the fragmentation of the baryonic component during merging of dark matter halos in the early Universe are studied. We assume that the baryonic component undergoes a shock compression. The characteristic masses of…
The high ionization level and universal metallicity (1% solar) of the intergalactic gas at redshifts z<5 implies that nonlinear structure had started to form in the universe at earlier times than we currently probe. In Cold Dark Matter…
Thermal and chemical evolution of primordial gas clouds irradiated with far-ultraviolet (FUV; < 13.6 eV) radiation is investigated. In clouds irradiated by intense FUV radiation, sufficient hydrogen molecules to be important for cooling are…
The formation of stars from gas drives the evolution of galaxies. Yet, it remains one of the hardest processes to understand when trying to connect observations of stellar and galaxy populations to models of large scale structure formation.…
The 5 independent correlations between the properties of galaxies observed outside big clusters must set such strong constraints on any theory of galaxy formation that it is hard to imagine any but the right one passing muster; certainly…
The first star formation in the universe is expected to take place within small protogalaxies, in which the gas is cooled by molecular hydrogen. However, if massive stars form within these protogalaxies, they may suppress further star…
Essentially all stars form in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). However, inside GMCs, most of the gas does not participate in star formation; rather, denser gas accumulates in clumps in the GMC, with the bulk of the stars in a given GMC…
If a significant fraction of metals is in dust, star-forming cores with metallicity higher than a critical value ~10^{-6}-10^{-5}Z_sun are able to fragment by dust cooling, thereby producing low-mass cores. Despite being above the critical…