Collaborative Research: Stars from Clouds - Turbulence, Magnetic Fields and Dynamics of Forming Star Clusters

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Stars are formed in molecular clouds of gas in galaxies. Astronomers seek to understand what causes a particular region of a molecular cloud to form a star. This seemingly simple question is at the heart of several basic research frontiers of modern astrophysics, including galaxy formation and the origin of stellar clusters. The investigators plan numerical simulations of magnetized molecular clouds that include important physical processes and a variety of initial conditions. The investigators will compare their models to radio wavelength observations of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) from NSF’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). In their studies of the structure and kinematics of GMCs, they will focus on long, filamentary clouds that have been found in the Galactic plane. The investigators will test models of dynamics of young stellar systems using data from ongoing optical surveys of thousands of young stars. The investigators will train undergraduate and graduate students in advanced research methods, which will be of general benefit in their future careers in either science or industry. The investigators plan a new “Stars from the Clouds” presentation for public outreach programs.The team plans numerical simulations of the dynamics of magnetized molecular clouds, including clouds extracted from larger scale shearing galactic disk simulations, giant molecular cloud collisions and idealized periodic box turbulence. A focus of the simulations is inclusion of non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamic processes of ambipolar and reconnection diffusion in adaptive mesh refinement simulations, which also model astrochemistry and predict metrics to be compared to observations. For the stellar cores, the priority will be study of spatial distributions and populations of pre-stellar and proto-stellar cores.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.