Star formation simulations

 

In Rey-Raposo et al., 2015, MNRAS Letters, we simulate star formation in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) taken from galaxy simulations. Above shows one example, of a 1 million solar mass cloud, modelled with 10 million particles. Black dots represent new stars. We find the rate of star formation has a dependence on the velocity field of the cloud, inherited from the galaxy simulation. We compare our results with turbulent spheres, which are typically used to model clouds. Although there's typically not a large difference between the galactic clouds and spheres, the effects of the large scale velocity are not represented by turbulent spheres.