Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation

By H. Zinnecker, H. Yorke. 2007

998 citations recorded by the source corpus.

AbstractAlthough fundamental for astrophysics, the processes that produce massive stars are not well understood. Large distances, high extinction, and short timescales of critical evolutionary phases make observations of these processes challenging. Lacking good observational guidance, theoretical models have remained controversial. This review offers a basic description of the collapse of a massive molecular core and a critical discussion of the three competing concepts of massive star formation: ▪ monolithic collapse in isolated cores ▪ competitive accretion in a protocluster environment ▪ stellar collisions and mergers in very dense systems We also review the observed outflows, multiplicity, and clustering properties of massive stars, the upper initial mass function and the upper mass limit. We conclude that high-mass star formation is not merely a scaled-up version of low-mass star formation with higher accretion rates, but partly a mechanism of its own, primarily owing to the role of stellar mass ...

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6637886569ec3f79eeb3db19b694b56c6b954cd3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

CIRCUMVENTING THE RADIATION PRESSURE BARRIER IN THE FORMATION OF MASSIVE STARS VIA DISK ACCRETION (2010, background): “Reviews of observations related to a proposed picture of evolutionary sequences of massive star formation are given in Beuther et al. (2007) or Zinnecker & Yorke (2007).”
The formation of very wide binaries during the star cluster dissolution phase (2010, background): “…of stars in the Galactic field are in binary and multiple systems (e.g, Duquennoy & Mayor 1991; Fischer & Marcy 1992; Mason et al. 1998; Shatsky & Tokovinin 2002; Goodwin & Kroupa 2005; Kobulnicky & Fryer 2007; Kouwenhoven et al. 2005, 2007; Lada 2006; Zinnecker & Yorke 2007; Goodwin et al. 2007).”
EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE PROTOSTARS VIA DISK ACCRETION (2010, background): “The evolution of massive protostars at such high rates is a critical feature of massive star formation which determines the effect these stars have on their environment (e.g., Zinnecker & Yorke 2007).”
The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 M⊙ stellar mass limit (2010, background): “1 IN T RO D U C T I O N Although the formation of very massive stars remains an unsolved problem of astrophysics (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007), the past decade E-mail: Paul.Crowther@shef.ac.uk has seen a shift from a belief that there is no observational upper stellar mass cut-off (e.g. Massey 2003) to…”
LOW VIRIAL PARAMETERS IN MOLECULAR CLOUDS: IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGH-MASS STAR FORMATION AND MAGNETIC FIELDS (2013, methodology): “Here, we refer to this process as “monolithic accretion” (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007; e.g., the McKee & Tan 2002, 2003 models belong to this category).”
HIGH- AND INTERMEDIATE-MASS YOUNG STELLAR OBJECTS IN THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD (2009, background): “However, the circumstellar structure and evolution of massive YSOs are much less certain (e.g., Zinnecker & Yorke 2007; Cesaroni et al. 2007).”
FORMATION OF MASSIVE MOLECULAR CLOUD CORES BY CLOUD–CLOUD COLLISION (2013, background): “However, how massive stars are formed in molecular cloud is still a matter of debate (e.g., Zinnecker & Yorke 2007).”
New constraints on the multiplicity of massive young stars in Upper Scorpius (2015, background): “Furthermore, massive stars are often found in higher order multiple systems, i.e., triple or quadruple systems (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007) and short-period binaries (Duchêne & Kraus 2013).”
MODELING COLLAPSE AND ACCRETION IN TURBULENT GAS CLOUDS: IMPLEMENTATION AND COMPARISON OF SINK PARTICLES IN AMR AND SPH (2010, background): “Moreover, in the densest existing star clusters, even merging of stars might be possible (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007).”
A spectroscopic survey of Herbig Ae/Be stars with X-shooter – I. Stellar parameters and accretion rates (2015, methodology): “Table 4 shows the comparison of the mass distribution in this work versus the distribution given in Zinnecker & Yorke (2007) for a typical IMF function.”
ATLASGAL - The APEX telescope large area survey of the galaxy at 870 μm (2009, background): “High-mass star formation is even less well constrained (e.g., Zinnecker & Yorke 2007; Beuther et al. 2007, for reviews) and there is controversy about how these stars attain their final masses: either driven by turbulence (McKee & Tan 2003) or competitive accretion (e.g., Bonnell et al. 2004).”
Binary Interaction Dominates the Evolution of Massive Stars (2012, critical): “This challenges current star formation theories (24).”
H II REGIONS: WITNESSES TO MASSIVE STAR FORMATION (2010, background): “Young massive stars are almost always observed to have companions (Ho & Haschick 1981), and the number of their companions significantly exceeds those of low-mass stars (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007).”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, background): “Many of the most massive stars exist in tight (orbital periods of a few days) binaries (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007).”
Super and massive AGB stars - IV. Final fates - Initial to final mass relation (2014, background): “The binary fraction of stars increases with increasing mass (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007), up to ∼70 per cent in O type stars (Sana et al. 2012).”
Protoplanetary Disks and Their Evolution (2011, background): “This may be due to very high photoevaporation rates so that disks are not detectable by the time an O star is optically visible or due to an altogether different star formation mechanism (Zinnecker & Yorke 2007).”