Seminarios de Astrofísica en el INAOE

Molecular Cloud Evolution: from birth to star formation to...?

I will discuss the emerging picture of molecular cloud evolution from the perspective of numerical simulations, from their formation out of the warm atomic gas, their early stages as diffuse, cold atomic clouds, the establishment of their physical properties, such as the generation of their internal turbulence and pressure, the onset of gravitational contraction, which leads to their apparently virialized state, to their star-forming stages, including self-regulation of the star formation rate and the effect of the stellar feedback on the parent clouds.