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Register a new userPhysical Processes in Star Formation
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Star formation is a complex multi-scale phenomenon that is of significant importance for astrophysics in general. Stars and star formation are key pillars in observational astronomy from local star forming regions in the Milky Way up to high-redshift galaxies. From a theoretical perspective, star formation and feedback processes (radiation, winds, and supernovae) play a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of the physical processes at work, both individually and of their interactions. In this review we will give an overview of the main processes that are important for the understanding of star formation. We start with an observationally motivated view on star formation from a global perspective and outline the general paradigm of the life-cycle of molecular clouds, in which star formation is the key process to close the cycle. After that we focus on the thermal and chemical aspects in star forming regions, discuss turbulence and magnetic fields as well as gravitational forces. Finally, we review the most important stellar feedback mechanisms.
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I discuss the role of self-gravity and radiative heating and cooling in shaping the nature of the turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM) of our galaxy. The heating and cooling cause it to be highly compressible, and, in some regimes of density and temperature, to become thermally unstable, tending to spontaneously segregate into warm/diffuse and cold/dense phases. On the other hand, turbulence is an inherently mixing process, tending to replenish the density and temperature ranges that would be forbidden under thermal processes alone. The turbulence in the ionized ISM appears to be transonic (i.e, with Mach numbers $Ms sim 1$), and thus to behave essentially incompressibly. However, in the neutral medium, thermal instability causes the sound speed of the gas to fluctuate by up to factors of $sim 30$, and thus the flow can be highly supersonic with respect to the dense/cold gas, although numerical simulations suggest that this behavior corresponds more to the ensemble of cold clumps than to the clumps internal velocity dispersion. Finally, coherent large-scale compressions in the warm neutral medium (induced by, say, the passage of spiral arms or by supernova shock waves) can produce large, dense molecular clouds that are subject to their own self-gravity, and begin to contract gravitationally. Because they are populated by nonlinear density fluctuations, whose local free-fall times are significantly smaller than that of the whole cloud, the fluctuations terminate their collapse earlier, giving rise to a regime of hierarchical gravitational fragmentation, with small-scale collapses occurring within larger-scale ones. Thus, the turbulence in molecular clouds may be dominated by a gravitationally contracting component at all scales.
We present multi-scale and multi-wavelength observations of the Galactic HII region S305, which is excited by massive O8.5V and O9.5V stars. Infrared images reveal an extended sphere-like shell (extension ~7.5 pc; at T_d = 17.5-27 K) enclosing the S305 HII region (size ~5.5 pc; age ~1.7 Myr). The extended structure observed in the Herschel temperature map indicates that the molecular environment of S305 is heated by the massive O-type stars. Regularly spaced molecular condensations and dust clumps are investigated toward the edges of the infrared shell, where the PAH and H_2 emission is also observed. The molecular line data show a signature of an expanding shell of molecular gas in S305. GMRT 610 and 1280 MHz continuum maps reveal overdensities of the ionized emission distributed around two O-type stars, which are surrounded by the horseshoe envelope (extension ~2.3 pc). A molecular gas deficient region/cavity is identified toward the center of the horseshoe envelope, which is well traced with PAH, H_2, molecular, and dust emission. The edges of the infrared shell are found to be located in the front of the horseshoe envelope. All these outcomes provide the observational evidence of the feedback of O-type stars in S305. Moreover, non-thermal radio emission is detected in S305 with an average spectral index alpha ~-0.45. The variations in alpha, ranging from -1.1 to 1.3, are explained due to soft synchrotron emission and either optically-thicker thermal emission at high frequencies or a suppression of the low-frequency emission by the Razin-Tsytovich effect.
We investigate the triggering of star formation in clouds that form in Galactic scale flows as the ISM passes through spiral shocks. We use the Lagrangian nature of SPH simulations to trace how the star forming gas is gathered into self-gravitating cores that collapse to form stars. Large scale flows that arise due to Galactic dynamics create shocks of order 30 km/s that compress the gas and form dense clouds $(n> $several $times 10^2$ cm$^{-3}$) in which self-gravity becomes relevant. These large-scale flows are necessary for creating the dense physical conditions for gravitational collapse and star formation. Local gravitational collapse requires densities in excess of $n>10^3$ cm$^{-3}$ which occur on size scales of $approx 1$ pc for low-mass star forming regions ($M<100 M_{odot}$), and up to sizes approaching 10 pc for higher-mass regions ($M>10^3 M_{odot}$). Star formation in the 250 pc region lasts throughout the 5 Myr timescale of the simulation with a star formation rate of $approx 10^{-1} M_{odot}$ yr$^{-1}$ kpc$^{-2}$. In the absence of feedback, the efficiency of the star formation per free-fall time varies from our assumed 100 % at our sink accretion radius to values of $< 10^{-3}$ at low densities.
We present comprehensive characterization of the Galactic open cluster M 36. Some two hundred member candidates, with an estimated contamination rate of $sim$8%, have been identified on the basis of proper motion and parallax measured by the $Gaia$ DR2. The cluster has a proper motion grouping around ($mu_{alpha} cosdelta = -$0.15 $pm$ 0.01 mas yr$^{-1}$, and $mu_{delta} = -$3.35 $pm$ 0.02 mas yr$^{-1}$), distinctly separated from the field population. Most member candidates have parallax values 0.7$-$0.9 mas, with a median value of 0.82 $pm$ 0.07 mas (distance $sim$1.20 $pm$ 0.13 kpc). The angular diameter of 27$$ $pm$ $0farcm4$ determined from the radial density profile then corresponds to a linear extent of 9.42 $pm$ 0.14 pc. With an estimated age of $sim$15 Myr, M 36 is free of nebulosity. To the south-west of the cluster, we discover a highly obscured ($A_{V}$ up to $sim$23 mag), compact ($sim$ $1farcm9 times 1farcm2$) dense cloud, within which three young stellar objects in their infancy (ages $lesssim$ 0.2 Myr) are identified. The molecular gas, 3.6 pc in extent, contains a total mass of (2$-$3)$times$10$^{2}$ M$_{odot}$, and has a uniform velocity continuity across the cloud, with a velocity range of $-$20 to $-$22 km s$^{-1}$, consistent with the radial velocities of known star members. In addition, the cloud has a derived kinematic distance marginally in agreement with that of the star cluster. If physical association between M 36 and the young stellar population can be unambiguously established, this manifests a convincing example of prolonged star formation activity spanning up to tens of Myrs in molecular clouds.
We study the star formation (SF) law in 12 Galactic molecular clouds with ongoing high-mass star formation (HMSF) activity, as traced by the presence of a bright IRAS source and other HMSF tracers. We define the molecular cloud (MC) associated to each IRAS source using 13CO line emission, and count the young stellar objects (YSOs) within these clouds using GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL 24 micron Spitzer databases.The masses for high luminosity YSOs (Lbol>10~Lsun) are determined individually using Pre Main Sequence evolutionary tracks and the evolutionary stages of the sources, whereas a mean mass of 0.5 Msun was adopted to determine the masses in the low luminosity YSO population. The star formation rate surface density (sigsfr) corresponding to a gas surface density (siggas) in each MC is obtained by counting the number of the YSOs within successive contours of 13CO line emission. We find a break in the relation between sigsfr and siggas, with the relation being power-law (sigsfr ~ siggas^N) with the index N varying between 1.4 and 3.6 above the break. The siggas at the break is between 150-360 Msun/pc^2 for the sample clouds, which compares well with the threshold gas density found in recent studies of Galactic star-forming regions. Our clouds treated as a whole lie between the Kennicutt (1998) relation and the linear relation for Galactic and extra-galactic dense star-forming regions. We find a tendency for the high-mass YSOs to be found preferentially in dense regions at densities higher than 1200 Msun/pc^2 (~0.25 g/cm^2).
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