CAREER: Shining STARs Amidst the Turbulence

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Principal Investigator (PI) Battersby and her team are comparing large observational datasets with custom numerical simulations to study molecular gas and dust in clouds at the center of the Milky Way. The team are investigating turbulence, which can compress cloud fragments and seed the gravitational collapse that leads to the formation of stars and planets. On larger scales, turbulence can stir up the clouds and slow down the onset of fragmentation and gravitational collapse. To advance our understanding of this process the team will compare their observations to custom numerical simulations and determine the physical properties of turbulence as well as quantify the number of cloud cores that will form stars. To improve the retention of undergraduate students from under-represented groups in STEM, PI Battersby will lead the University of Connecticut Science, Technology, and Astronomy Recruits (UConn-STARs) program. The students will participate in professional development activities and outreach at local high schools. PI Battersby and her team will make statistical comparisons between their numerical simulations and data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) to disentangle the physical origin of Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) turbulence and measure its properties (the Mach number, virial parameter, and solenoidal fraction). They will also compare the turbulence in the extreme environment of the CMZ, the inner 500 pc of the Milky Way, to that in more quiescent parts of the disk. The team will compare the Core Mass Function, the precursor of the stellar initial mass function, in these different parts of the Galaxy to further our understanding of how turbulence regulates star formation and how it may vary with environment.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.