The origin of stellar and planetary systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The birth of stars and planets is the overarching theme of my research program. Stars typically form in stellar clusters within turbulent, magnetized clouds of gas. How do these clusters end up with a well-defined, and possibly universal distribution of stellar masses (the so-called initial mass function, or IMF)? Dense regions of gas within such forming clusters collapse to form gaseous protostellar disks, which can form single or binary stars. What properties do these disks have? Do the energetic outflows that appear to be associated with the disks have some role in limiting the mass of the stars that form within them? It is well known that these protostellar disks are the birth regions for planetary systems as well - so by studying the disks we can follow the growth of planets from these earliest times.