Related papers: Placing stars within cosmological simulations
We summarize the results of numerical simulations of colliding gas-rich disk galaxies in which the impact velocity is set parallel to the spin axes of the two galaxies. The effects of varying the impact speed are studied with particular…
The earliest evolution of star clusters involves a phase of co-existence of both newly-formed stars, and the gas from which they are forming. Observations of the gas in such regions provide a wealth of data that can inform the simulations…
We compare the spatial distribution of stars which form in hydrodynamical simulations to the spatial distribution of the gas, using the $\mathcal{Q}$-parameter. The $\mathcal{Q}$-parameter enables a self-consistent comparison between the…
The formation of the first stars out of metal-free gas appears to result in stars at least an order of magnitude more massive than in the present-day case. We here consider what controls the transition from a primordial to a modern initial…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
The state of the hot gas in clusters of galaxies is investigated with a set of model clusters, created by assuming a polytropic equation of state (Gamma=1.2) and hydrostatic equilibrium inside gravitational potential wells drawn from a dark…
To constrain the nature of the very first stars, we investigate the collapse and fragmentation of primordial, metal-free gas clouds. We explore the physics of primordial star formation by means of three-dimensional simulations of the dark…
We propose a simple theoretical model for star formation in which the local star formation rate in a galaxy is determined by three factors. First, the interplay between the interstellar radiation field and molecular self-shielding…
We implement physically motivated recipes for partitioning cold gas into different phases (atomic, molecular, and ionized) in galaxies within semi-analytic models of galaxy formation based on cosmological merger trees. We then model the…
We present a model that explains why galaxies form stars on a time scale significantly longer than the time scales of processes governing the evolution of interstellar gas. We show that gas evolves from a non-star-forming to a star-forming…
We compare two techniques for following the cooling of gas and its condensation into galaxies within high resolution simulations of cosmologically representative regions. Both techniques treat the dark matter using N-body methods. One…
Stars form from cold molecular interstellar gas. Since this is relatively rare in the local Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way form only a few new stars per year. Typical massive galaxies in the distant Universe formed stars an order of…
We compare the cosmic evolution of star formation rates in galaxies with that of their neutral hydrogen densities. We highlight the need for neutral hydrogen to be continually replenished from a reservoir of ionized gas to maintain the…
Primordial star formation appears to result in stars at least an order of magnitude more massive than modern star formation. It has been proposed that the transition from primordial to modern initial mass functions occurs due to the onset…
Star formation occurs within dense regions of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), however, exactly how gas collects and evolves to form individual stars and what role dense cores play remains unclear. We use the Lagrangian cell information in…
Star formation in galaxies is regulated by the heating and cooling in the interstellar medium. In particular, the processing of molecular gas into stars will depend strongly on the ratio of gas heating to gas cooling in the neutral gas…
We investigate the thermal and dynamical evolution of primordial gas clouds in the universe after decoupling. Comparing the time-scale of dynamical evolution with that of fragmentation, we can estimate the typical fragmentation scale. We…
It is widely believed that the global baryon content and mass-to-light ratio of groups and clusters of galaxies are a fair representative of the matter mix of the universe and therefore, can be used to reliably determine the cosmic mass…
The current generation of millimeter interferometers have revealed a population of compact (r <~ 0.1 pc), massive (M ~ 100 Msun) gas cores that are the likely progenitors of massive stars. I review models for the evolution of these objects…
We studied the effect of interstellar gas conditions on global galaxy simulations by considering three different models for the ISM. Our first model included only radiative cooling down to 300 K, our second model added an additional…