Skip to main content
title

Mass assembly in star-forming clouds from filaments to disks

Recent surveys of dust continuum emission of Galactic star-forming regions have revealed the ubiquity of filamentary structures in molecular clouds. The prevalence of filaments within star-forming regions raises the tantalizing possibility that the star formation efficiency in molecular clouds is strongly dependent on how these dense filaments form and evolve. Using a summary of recent GBT and ALMA results across stellar cluster to protostellar disk scales, I will show how the combined analysis of gas dynamics and chemistry in star-forming regions is critical for testing models of filamentary formation and evolution. I will end by discussing my new Large Program, the Green Bank Ammonia Survey (GAS), that is mapping the dense molecular gas of all the major star-forming molecular clouds within 500 pc. Through GAS, we will connect the gas kinematics and chemistry to the rich, hierarchical cloud structure identified in submillimeter continuum surveys.

Cody Hall

Rachel Friesen (University of Toronto)

March 20, 2015
14:00 - 15:00