Star Formation

Prof. Sara Beck

This course is intended for first-year graduate students and advanced undergraduates. There is no textbook but there will be extensive reading of research and review papers, mostly in English. Links to the reading will be posted here.

The grade will be based on exercises (40%) and the final exam (60%).

Syllabus:

• Background, Motivation, and the Burning Questions
• Review of rates, masses, IMF, disks, outflows, clusters.
• Sites of star formation. Intro to molecular clouds and how to observe them.
• Molecular clouds, how they collapse and how they can be supported. Lifetimes, collapse timescales, support mechanisms
• Cloud fragmentation and what determines stellar sizes. Hayashi tracks.
• Stellar ignition, D and H burning. Stars igniting inside molecular clouds and the developement of HII regions. More observational challenges. Radiation and shock fronts, effects on clouds.
• Formation of proto-stars, proto-star/disk systems. Class 0--3 objects.
• Disks and protoplanetary systems.
• Differences between Low and High Mass Protostars
• Multiple stars: formation and early stages of life in binaries, associations, and bound clusters
• Galaxy-scale phenomena: rings, arms, starbursts

Reading (will be updated throughout course):

• Physical Conditions in Regions of Star Formation
• Star Formation in Molecular Clouds:Observation and Theory
• The Latest Review of Star Formation Theory: long and difficult but worth it
• A useful reference on molecular spectra
• 27/10:NOTES ON MOLECULAR LINES AND RADIATIVE TRANSFER
• Winds, Jets and Outflows
• Disks and Planets--Recommend Pages 8--21
• Ultra-Compact HII Regions: A Classic Paper
• A good reference for ionized regions and radio thermal emission
• Competitive Accretion: the most recent simulation results, showing the flickering HII regions
• Radio Emission of Galaxies
• Starbursts in the Infrared
• Kennicutt 1998: THE classic Extragalactic Star Formation reference



Problem Sets

• 1--Due November 17
• 1--Due December 22