Main questions to be addressed by STARFORM:
- Is there a unique law describing star formation across the Universe?
- What is the importance of turbulence in star formation?
- What is the physical origin and nature of star forming clumps in high redshift galaxies?
- What is the impact of feedback on the structure and star formation properties of distant galaxies?
Main concrete objectives:
- Study the behaviour of very cold gas at small scales
- Understand the physics of molecular clouds through observations, simulations, and confrontation between them
- Establish the relation between cores and stars, e.g. the core mass function
- Develop new tools to predict IR/mm observations from state-of-the-art simulations
- Carry out a new generation of numerical high-resolution simulations of distant star-forming galaxies to study the origin and importance of massive clumps, and other processes on disk and bulge formation
- Obtain observations of near-IR, IR and mm molecular and atomic lines of strongly lensed star-forming galaxies to determine the physical properties of the gas and the conditions of star formation in high- redshift galaxies
- Comparison of star formation properties in distant galaxies and in the nearby Universe
Methods to be used:
- New code developments
- New simulations and applications
- New multi-wavelength observations