2009/09/23 by Andrés Escala, Andres Escala, Escala, Andres
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0909.4318
11 pages, 1 figure. Submitted
arxiv created 2009/09/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We study the large-scale triggering of star formation in galaxies. We find that the largest mass-scale not stabilized by rotation, a well defined quantity in a rotating system and with clear dynamical meaning, strongly correlates with the star formation rate in a wide range of galaxies. We find that this relation can be explained in terms of the threshold for stability and the amount of turbulence allowed to sustain the system in equilibrium. Using this relation we also derived the observed correlation between the star formation rate and the luminosity of the brightest young stellar cluster.