Young massive star cluster formation in the Galactic Centre being driven by the global collapse of high-mass, dense molecular clouds

Ashley Barnes

Thursday December 5th, 14:30

Young massive clusters (YMCs) are the most compact stellar systems forming at the present day. As such, they represent the most extreme environments in which it is possible to observe individual stars forming. They, therefore, provide the ideal regions to empirically quantify how variations in environmental conditions affect star and planet formation. Previous observations of molecular clouds thought to be the most likely progenitors of YMCs have shown that the current mass surface density profiles of these clouds are one to two orders of magnitude lower than comparable actively star-forming molecular clouds and YMCs. It has been inferred that if these are YMC progenitor gas clouds, they must be undergoing global gravitational contraction while forming stars to eventually reach the required stellar densities in YMCs. In this talk, I will discuss recent efforts to reliably trace the gas kinematics from cloud scales down (~1pc) to the size scales of individual star-forming cores (<0.1pc) in several postulated YMC precursor clouds in the Galactic Centre, and the implications of these results for the current theories of massive cluster formation.