Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Processes Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Processes

Observational Studies Of Fragmentation In Molecular Clouds, Riwaj Pokhrel Oct 2019

Observational Studies Of Fragmentation In Molecular Clouds, Riwaj Pokhrel

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore fragmentation physics in multiple scales in nearby molecular clouds and discuss some implications of fragmentation for cloud structure formation and star formation, primarily by analyzing multi-wavelength observations of dust emission. First, I tested the complete thermal and combined thermal and nonthermal support mechanisms that balance gravitational contraction at multiple scales in the Perseus molecular cloud. I found that the observed multiscale structures in Perseus are consistent with an inefficient thermal Jeans fragmentation, where the Jeans efficiency increases from the largest scale ($\gtrsim$10s of pc) to the smallest scale ($\sim$10s of AU). Next, I studied the …


The Non-Linear Dynamics Of Barred Galaxy Evolution In Lcdm, Michael Petersen Mar 2019

The Non-Linear Dynamics Of Barred Galaxy Evolution In Lcdm, Michael Petersen

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of barred galaxy dynamics has had many successes explaining observed phenomena in barred galaxies both locally and distant, including our own Milky Way, a barred galaxy. However, the majority of this knowledge arises from either (a) analytic linear theory, which by definition cannot inform nonlinear processes, or (b) simulations which are subject to an unconstrained host of evolutionary mechanisms, including `real' dynamical processes and `artificial' numerical processes, and are thus difficult to interpret. This work chooses a path which attempts to take the best of both techniques, employing n-body simulations in the Lambda cold dark matter paradigm designed …