Letters of Intent received in 2017

LoI 2019-2003
Transport in Star Formation across the Universe

Topics

Protostars to stars: the individuals
From cores to protostars
The shape and collapse of molecular clouds
Cluster formation and dispersal

Galactic scale panorama
Ongoing star and galaxy formation
Distant extragalactic star formation
Primordial stars
The Big Picture: bringing the scales together

Rationale

This symposium is intended to unite researchers working on diverse aspects of dynamical star formation on all scales. Starting with the physics of individual systems, we build up to the phenomena on the largest entities. The emphasis is on the dynamics: how material is seen to be transported between the components and what does the transporting. Mechanisms include sweeping, stirring, accretion, winds, jets, to name a few.
In particular, Galactic astronomy has been undergoing a renaissance in recent years due largely to a huge investment by the community in Galactic plane surveys that have mapped all of the inner Galaxy and large areas of the outer Galaxy over all wavelengths between near-infrared to radio. Crucial distance information has been provided by gold standard maser parallax measurements and will be enhanced in the near future by Gaia. 

This is allowing us to map the Galactic distribution of giant molecular clouds and dense clumps where stars are forming and to start to investigate the role that environment and the spiral arms play in the star formation transport processes and their impact on the star formation rate and efficiencies. We are fast moving towards a point where we will be able to compare the structure and star formation in the Milky Way to nearby galaxies and compare the different environmental conditions found in the our Galaxy (Galactic centre, inter disk and outer Galaxy) to understand star formation taking place in the more distant universe. 

One current difficulty is that there is little overlap between the Galactic and extragalactic communities and the analysis techniques and parameters of interest can be significantly different. This makes bridging the gap between the two fields more challenging. The focus of this meeting would be to bring the two communities together and develop collaborations and coherent strategies for exploiting the synergies between the two field.