Picture Of Star Formation Research Articles

Ammonia in the interstellar medium of a starbursting disc at z = 2.6

ABSTRACT We report the detection of the ground state rotational emission of ammonia, ortho-NH3 (JK = 10 → 00) in a gravitationally lensed intrinsically hyperluminous star-bursting galaxy at z = 2.6. The integrated line profile is consistent with other molecular and atomic emission lines which have resolved kinematics well modelled by a 5 kpc-diameter rotating disc. This implies that the gas responsible for NH3 emission is broadly tracing the global molecular reservoir, but likely distributed in pockets of high density (n ≳ 5 × 104 cm−3). With a luminosity of 2.8 × 106 L⊙, the NH3 emission represents 2.5 × 10−7 of the total infrared luminosity of the galaxy, comparable to the ratio observed in the Kleinmann–Low nebula in Orion and consistent with sites of massive star formation in the Milky Way. If $L_{\rm NH_3}/L_{\rm IR}$ serves as a proxy for the ‘mode’ of star formation, this hints that the nature of star formation in extreme starbursts in the early Universe is similar to that of Galactic star-forming regions, with a large fraction of the cold interstellar medium in this state, plausibly driven by a storm of violent disc instabilities in the gas-dominated disc. This supports the ‘full of Orions’ picture of star formation in the most extreme galaxies seen close to the peak epoch of stellar mass assembly.

The Formation and Destruction of Molecular Clouds and Galactic Star Formation

AbstractWe discuss an overall picture of star formation in the Galaxy. Recent high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of two-fluid dynamics with cooling/heating and thermal conduction have shown that the formation of molecular clouds requires multiple episodes of supersonic compression. This finding enables us to create a new scenario of molecular cloud formation through interacting shells or bubbles on galactic scales. We estimate the ensemble-averaged growth rate of individual molecular clouds, and predict the associated cloud mass function. This picture naturally explains the accelerated star formation over many million years that was previously reported by stellar age determination in nearby star forming regions. The recent claim of cloud-cloud collisions as a mechanism for forming massive stars and star clusters can be naturally accommodated in this scenario. This explains why massive stars formed in cloud-cloud collisions follows the power-law slope of the mass function of molecular cloud cores repeatedly found in low-mass star forming regions.

Star Formation in the First Galaxies

The formation of the first stars and galaxies mark the end of the cosmic dark ages, thus transforming the universe from its initial, pristine state into one of increasing complexity. We will review the current understanding, based on numerical simulations, of this crucial transition in early cosmic history. Specifically, the epoch of first light is predicted to be a two-stage process, where predominantly massive Population III stars form out of pure hydrogen-helium gas in small dark-matter minihalos, followed by Population II stars out of already metal-enriched material inside more massive host halos. Observations with upcoming next-generation telescopes promise to test our emerging theoretical picture of star formation in the first galaxies in ever inceasing detail.

A Radio View of Star Formation in II Zw 40

Star formation in the low mass and low metallicity environments of dwarf galaxies provides important clues about how star formation proceeded in the early universe. To measure the properties of youngest star forming regions – those closest to stellar birth conditions – one needs to use an extinction-free tracer of thermal emission, such as free-free continuum emission in the radio, to penetrate the dust surrounding these regions. We present high sensitivity and high resolution observations of the radio continuum emission in the low metallicity dwarf galaxy II Zw 40 and combine it with HST ACS data and single dish CO(1–0) to gain a more complete picture of star formation in this galaxy.

Tracking down a critical halo mass for killing galaxies through the growth of the red sequence

Abstract Red-sequence galaxies record the history of terminated star formation in the Universe and can thus provide important clues to the mechanisms responsible for this termination. We construct composite samples of published cluster and field galaxy photometry in order to study the build-up of galaxies on the red sequence, as parametrized by the dwarf-to-giant ratio (DGR). We find that the DGR in clusters is higher than that of the field at all redshifts, implying that the faint end of the red sequence was established first in clusters. We find that the DGR evolves with redshift for both samples, consistent with the ‘down-sizing’ picture of star formation. We examine the predictions of semi-analytic models for the DGR and find that neither the magnitude of its environmental dependence nor its evolution is correctly predicted in the models. Red-sequence DGRs are consistently too high in the models, the most likely explanation being that the strangulation mechanism used to remove hot gas from satellite galaxies is too efficient. Finally, we present a simple toy model including a threshold mass, below which galaxies are not strangled, and show that this can predict the observed evolution of the field DGR.

Observational Test of an Accretion Model of Star Formation in Galactic Clusters

Theoretical predictions of an accretion model of star formation in galactic clusters, published quite long ago, which is found to have some relevance with the current picture of star formation have been tested with observation of seven clusters of young and intermediate ages. It is found that the agreement between the theory and observation is very good.

A Theory of the Initial Mass Function for Star Formation in Molecular Clouds

We present models for the initial mass function (IMF) for stars forming within molecular clouds. These models use the idea that stars determine their own masses through the action of powerful stellar outflows. This concept allows us to calculate a semi-empirical mass formula (SEMF), which provides the transformation between initial conditions in molecular clouds and the final masses of forming stars. For a particular SEMF, a given distribution of initial conditions predicts a corresponding IMF. We consider several different descriptions for the distribution of initial conditions in star forming molecular clouds. We first consider the limiting case in which only one physical variable -- the effective sound speed -- determines the initial conditions. In this limit, we use observed scaling laws to determine the distribution of sound speed and the SEMF to convert this distribution into an IMF. We next consider the opposite limit in which many different independent physical variables play a role in determining stellar masses. In this limit, the central limit theorem shows that the IMF approaches a log-normal form. Realistic star forming regions contain an intermediate number of relevant variables; we thus consider intermediate cases between the two limits. Our results show that this picture of star formation and the IMF naturally produces stellar mass distributions that are roughly consistent with observations. This paper thus provides a calculational framework to construct theoretical models of the IMF.