Abstract
Molecular clouds are a fundamental ingredient of galaxies: they are the channels that transform the diffuse gas into stars. The detailed process of how they do it is not completely understood. We review the current knowledge of molecular clouds and their substructure from scales \(\sim1~\mbox{kpc}\) down to the filament and core scale. We first review the mechanisms of cloud formation from the warm diffuse interstellar medium down to the cold and dense molecular clouds, the process of molecule formation and the role of the thermal and gravitational instabilities. We also discuss the main physical mechanisms through which clouds gather their mass, and note that all of them may have a role at various stages of the process. In order to understand the dynamics of clouds we then give a critical review of the widely used virial theorem, and its relation to the measurable properties of molecular clouds. Since these properties are the tools we have for understanding the dynamical state of clouds, we critically analyse them. We finally discuss the ubiquitous filamentary structure of molecular clouds and its connection to prestellar cores and star formation.
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Notes
It should be noticed that this result assumes that each line of sight is independent. This may not be the case in the case of strong magnetic fields, large scale gravitating structures, or a large correlation length of the turbulence.
We call the Larson ratio the square root of the so-called velocity scaling, \(C\equiv \sigma _{v}^{2}/R\), in the extragalactic literature.
We thank the anonymous referee for pointing out this issue.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the hospitality of the International Space Science Institute during the “Workshop on Star Formation”, held in Bern, Switzerland, May 2019. JBP acknowledges UNAM-DGAPA-PAPIIT support through grant number IN-111-219. PhA acknowledges support from the French national programs of CNRS/INSU on stellar and ISM physics (PNPS and PCMI) and from the European Research Council via the ERC Advanced Grant ORISTARS (Grant Agreement no. 291294). RSK acknowledges financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) via the collaborative research center (SFB 881, Project-ID 138713538) “The Milky Way System” (subprojects A1, B1, B2, and B8). He also thanks for funding from the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence STRUCTURES in the framework of Germany’s Excellence Strategy (grant EXC-2181/1—390900948) and for funding from the European Research Council via the ERC Synergy Grant ECOGAL (grant 855130) and the ERC Advanced Grant STARLIGHT (grant 339177). M.C. and J.M.D.K. gratefully acknowledge funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the form of an Emmy Noether Research Group (grant number KR4801/1-1) and a DFG Sachbeihilfe Grant (grant number KR4801/2-1). J.M.D.K. gratefully acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via the ERC Starting Grant MUSTANG (grant agreement number 714907), and from Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 881 “The Milky Way System” (subproject B2) of the DFG. A.A. acknowledges the support of the Swedish Research Council, Vetenskapsrådet, and the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA).
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Star Formation
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Ballesteros-Paredes, J., André, P., Hennebelle, P. et al. From Diffuse Gas to Dense Molecular Cloud Cores. Space Sci Rev 216, 76 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00698-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00698-3