From Massive Cores to Massive Stars

TL;DR

This paper presents a physical model detailing how massive gas cores in star-forming regions evolve through various stages to become stars, explaining properties of young star clusters as direct outcomes of their progenitors.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model linking the evolution of massive cores to star formation, emphasizing a direct core-to-star mapping.

Findings

Massive core evolution naturally leads to star formation.

Properties of young star clusters reflect their gas-phase progenitors.

The model explains observed distributions of stars and cores.

Abstract

The similarity between the mass and spatial distributions of pre-stellar gas cores in star-forming clouds and young stars in clusters provides strong circumstantial evidence that these gas cores are the direct progenitors of individual stars. Here I describe a physical model for the evolution of massive cores into stars, starting with the initial phases of collapse and fragmentation, through disk formation and fragmentation, the later phases of stellar feedback, and finally interaction of the newly formed stars with their environments. This model shows that a direct mapping from cores to stars is the natural physical outcome of massive core evolution, and thereby allows us to explain many of the properties of young star clusters as direct imprints of their gas-phase progenitors.