Related papers: Gravitational instability and star formation in di…
We present a model for the origin of the extended law of star formation in which the surface density of star formation ($\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$) depends not only on the local surface density of the gas ($\Sigma_{g}$), but also on the stellar…
Growth rates for gravitational instabilities in a thick disk of gas and stars are determined for a turbulent gas that dissipates on the local crossing time. The scale heights are derived from vertical equilibrium. The accuracy of the usual…
We present a two-zone theory for feedback-regulated star formation in galactic discs, consistently connecting the galaxy-averaged star formation law with star formation proceeding in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). Our focus is on galaxies…
We review recent observations of molecular gas in nearby galaxies and their implications for the star formation law on large (>1 kpc) scales. High-resolution data provided by millimetre interferometers are now adding to the basic…
(Abridged) We present a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between star formation rate surface density (SFR SD) and gas surface density (gas SD) at sub-kpc resolution in a sample of 18 nearby galaxies. We use high resolution HI data…
We study the relationship between the stability level of late-type galaxy disks and their star-formation activity using integral-field gaseous and stellar kinematic data. Specifically, we compare the two-component (gas+stars) stability…
A general treatment of disk star formation is developed from a dissipative multi-phase model, with the dominant dissipation due to cloud collisions. The Schmidt-Kennicutt law emerges naturally for star-forming disks and starbursts. We…
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…
We measure empirical relationships between the local star formation rate (SFR) and properties of the star-forming molecular gas on 1.5 kpc scales across 80 nearby galaxies. These relationships, commonly referred to as "star formation laws,"…
We examine how the atomic and molecular gas components of galaxies evolve to higher redshifts using the semi-analytic galaxy formation models of Fu et al. (2010) in which we track the surface density profiles of gas in disks. We adopt two…
We explore various instability models for the onset of star formation in irregular galaxies. Critical gas densities are calculated for gravitational instabilities with a thin, pure-gas disk, and with a thick disk composed of gas and a…
We explore the Schmidt-Kennicutt (SK) relations and the star formation efficiency per free-fall time ($\epsilon_{\rm ff}$), mirroring observational studies, in numerical simulations of filamentary molecular clouds undergoing gravitational…
We derive a semi-empirical galactic initial mass function (IMF) from observational constraints. We assume that the star formation rate in a galaxy can be expressed as the product of the IMF, $\psi (m)$, which is a smooth function of mass…
Star formation in galaxies relies on the availability of cold, dense gas, which, in turn, relies on factors internal and external to the galaxies. In order to provide a simple model for how star formation is regulated by various physical…
We investigate the relationship between HI, H_2, and the star formation rate (SFR) using azimuthally averaged data for seven CO-bright spiral galaxies. Contrary to some earlier studies based on global fluxes, we find that the SFR surface…
We study star cluster formation in various environments with different metallicities and column densities by performing a suite of three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations. We find that the photoionization feedback from massive…
We present radiation-magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of star formation in self-gravitating, turbulent molecular clouds, modeling the formation of individual massive stars, including their UV radiation feedback. The set of simulations have…
Regions of disc galaxies with widespread star formation tend to be both gravitationally unstable and self-shielded against ionizing radiation, whereas extended outer discs with little or no star formation tend to be stable and unshielded on…
We applied a criterion of gravitational instability, valid for two-component and infinitesimally thin discs, to observational data along the major axis for 7 spiral galaxies of early types. Unlike most papers, the dispersion equation…
The observed star formation rate of the Milky Way can be explained by applying a metallicity-dependent factor to convert CO luminosity to molecular gas mass and a star formation efficiency per free-fall time that depends on the virial…