Related papers: The Evolution of the Interstellar Medium Around Yo…
Most stars are born in rich young stellar clusters (YSCs) embedded in giant molecular clouds. The most massive stars live out their short lives there, profoundly influencing their natal environments by ionizing HII regions, inflating…
The interstellar medium (ISM) is a very complex medium which contains the matter needed to form stars and planets. The ISM is in permanent interaction with radiation, turbulence, magnetic and gravitational fields, and accelerated particles.…
Clusters are the dense inner regions of a wide-spread hierarchy of young stellar structures. They often reveal a continuation of this hierarchy inside of them, to smaller scales, when they are young, but orbital mixing eventually erases…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
In this contribution we review our recent numerical work discussing the essential role of the local cluster environment in assembling massive stars. First we show that massive stars are formed from low mass pre-stellar cores and become…
Turbulence, self-gravity, and cooling convert most of the interstellar medium into cloudy structures that form stars. Turbulence compresses the gas into clouds directly and it moves pre-existing clouds around passively when there are…
Massive stars drive the evolution of the interstellar medium through their radiative and mechanical energy input. After their birth, they form bubbles of hot gas surrounded by a dense shell. Traditionally, the formation of bubbles is…
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…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…
The wavelength dependences of interstellar extinction and polarization, supplemented by observed elemental abundances and the spectrum of infrared emission from dust heated by starlight, strongly constrain dust models. One dust model that…
Intermediate and massive stars drive fast and powerful isotropic winds that interact with the winds of nearby stars in star clusters and the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM). Wind-ISM collisions generate astrospheres around these stars…
Molecular clouds, the birthplaces of stars in galaxies, form dynamically from the diffuse atomic gas of the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is also threaded by magnetic fields which have a large impact on its dynamics. In particular,…
We discuss results from numerical simulations of star cluster formation in the turbulent interstellar medium (ISM). The thermodynamic behavior of the star-forming gas plays a crucial role in fragmentation and determines the stellar mass…
Interstellar space is filled with a dilute mixture of charged particles, atoms, molecules and dust grains, called the interstellar medium (ISM). Understanding its physical properties and dynamical behavior is of pivotal importance to many…
We review recent high spatial resolution millimeter continuum and spectral line observations of (proto-)cluster regions. These observations reveal that the mass distribution of prestellar cores is consistent with the initial mass function…
Stars do not generally form in isolation. Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds. Feedback from clustered stars is almost…
Studying outflows from young massive star-forming clusters allows one to deduce physical processes that lead to the formation of the most massive stars. I will review the current state of high-spatial-resolution interferometric (sub-)mm…
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…
Several structures have been discovered embedded in regions of recent or ongoing star formation, which point to the importance of the interaction between fast moving wind-blowing stars and their environment. Using hydrodynamic simulations,…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…