Australia Telescope National Facility

Kazufumi Torii Colloquium: High-mass star formation via cloud-cloud collision

Abstract

Tittle: High-mass star formation via cloud-cloud collision

Abstract:
High-mass stars are very energetic and give significant effects on their surroundings by intense UV radiation and strong stellar wind and ultimately by supernova. Understanding the formation of high-mass stars is therefore one of the most pressing issues in modern astronomy.
Our recent attempts to investigate parental molecular clouds in several high-mass star forming regions have shown that collision between two molecular clouds can trigger formation of high-mass stars (e.g., Torii et al. 2014, 2011, Fukui et al. 2014, Furukawa et al. 2009). Typical molecular masses of the colliding clouds are 10^3 - 10^5 Msun and the colliding velocity is 10-20 km/s. Strong compression at the interface of the collision provides a large mass accretion rate (>10^-3 Msun) (Inoue & Fukui 2013). This makes it possible to form high-mass stars at very short timescale, ~ 0.1Myr. In this talk, I will summarize a series of our studies working on cloud-cloud collisions and relevant topics.