Stars form in messy and chaotic environments within Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs). These GMCs are very interesting objects because of the rich physical processes that describe their evolution – GMCs are magnetized, supersonically turbulent fluids which are altered by feedback from newly formed stars.
Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs), the sites of star formation in our Universe, are supersonically turbulent and self-gravitating. Understanding supersonic turbulence under the influence of self-gravity is therefore crucial to understanding the dynamics of GMCs and star formation.
In Khullar et al (2019), we examined claims of star formation thresholds in observations. Most gas in giant molecular clouds is relatively low-density and forms star inefficiently, converting only a small fraction of its mass to stars per dynamical time.
In the past, I’ve been interested in understanding He re-ionization. Under the supervision of Prof. Benedetta Ciardi (MPA, Garching), I looked at the hyperfine transition of 3He+ as a probe of the high-z universe.
