Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Not available / text

Massive stars play a key role in the evolution of the Galaxy; hence they are important objects of study in astrophysics. Although they are rare compared to low mass stars, they are the principal source of heavy elements and UV radiation, affecting the process of formation of stars and planets, and the physical, chemical, and morphological structure of galaxies. Star clusters form in dense "clumps" (~few parsecs in size) within giant molecular clouds, while individual stars form in cores (subparsec scale). An important step in the observational study of massive star formation is the identification and characterization of clumps. More detailed studies can then show how these clumps fragment into cores. Studies of clumps in our Galaxy will provide fundamental guidelines for the analysis of other galaxies, where individual clumps and cores cannot be resolved, and provide a catalog of interesting sources for observations of the Milky Way with a new generation of instruments, such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array. Large-scale blind surveys of the Galactic plane at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths have recently been completed, allowing us to identify star forming clumps and improve our understanding of the early stages of massive stars. One of these studies, the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS), mapped the continuum emission at 1.1 mm over a large region of the northern Galactic plane at a resolution of 33'', identifying 8559 compact sources throughout the Galaxy. In this dissertation, I present observations of a sample of sources from the BGPS catalog, obtained with the Submillimeter High Angular Resolution Camera II (SHARC-II). I present in this work 107 continuum emission maps at 350 microns at high angular resolution (8.5'') toward clump-like sources and construct a catalog of BGPS substructures. I estimate clump properties such as temperatures and multiplicity of substructures, and compare my results with 350 microns continuum maps from the Hi-GAL survey. I also present a detailed analysis, using molecular line and dust continuum observations, of the region G331.5-0.1, one of the most luminous regions of massive star formation in the Milky Way, located at the tangent region of the Norma spiral arm. Molecular line and millimeter continuum emission maps reveal the presence of six compact and luminous molecular clumps, with physical properties consistent with values found toward other massive star forming sources. This work includes the discovery of one of the most energetic and luminous molecular outflows known in the Galaxy, G331.512-0.103. For this high-speed outflow, I present ALMA observations that reveal a very compact, extremely young bipolar outflow and a more symmetric outflowing shocked shell surrounding a very small region of ionized gas. The source is one of the youngest examples of massive molecular outflows associated with the formation of a high-mass star. / text

Despite its importance the fundamental question of how massive stars form remains unanswered, with improvements to both models and observations having crucial roles to play. To quote Bate et al. (2003) computational models of star formation are limited because “conditions in molecular clouds are not sufficiently well understood to be able to select a representative sample of cloud cores for the initial conditions”. It is this notion that motivates the study of the environments within Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) and Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs), known sites of massive star formation, at the clump and core level. By studying large populations of these objects, it is possible to make conclusions based on global properties. With this in mind I study the dense molecular clumps within one of the most massive GMCs in the Galaxy: the W51 GMC. New observations of the W51 GMC in the 12 CO, 13 CO and C18 O (3 – 2) transitions using the HARP instrument on the JCMT are presented. With the help of the clump finding algorithm CLUMPFIND a total of 1575 dense clumps are identified of which 1130 are associated with the W51 GMC, yielding a dense mass reservoir of 1.5 × 105 M contained within these clumps. Of these clumps only 1% by number are found to be super-critical, yielding a super-critical clump formation efficiency of 0.5%, below current SFE estimates of the region. This indicates star formation within the W51 GMC will diminish over time although evidence from the first search for molecular outflows presents the W51 GMC in an active light with a lower limit of 14 outflows. The distribution of the outflows within the region searched found them concentrated towards the W51A region. Having much smaller sizes and masses, obtaining global properties of clumps and cores within IRDCs required studying a large sample of these objects. To do this pre-existing data from the SCUBA Legacy Catalogue was utilised to study IRDCs within a catalogues based on 8 µm data. This data identifies 154 IRDC cores that are detected at 850 µm and 51 cores that were not. This work suggests that cores not detected at 850 µm are low mass, low column density and low temperature cores that are below the sensitivity limit of SCUBA at 850 µm. Utilising observations at 24 µm from the Spitzer space telescope, allows for an investigation of current star formation by looking for warm embedded objects within the cores. This work reveals 69% of the IRDC cores have 24 µm embedded objects. IRDC cores without associated 24 µm emission (“starless” IRDC cores) may have yet to form stars, or may contain low mass YSOs below the detection limit. If it is assumed that cores without 24 µm embedded sources are at an earlier evolutionary stage to cores with embedded objects a statistical lifetime for the quiescent phase of a few 103 – 104 years is derived.

The Galactic center supermassive black hole (SMBH) Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is the closest such object and thus is an ideal target for investigation of galactic nuclei and their activity cycles. Its remarkable underluminous X-ray state is punctuated by outbursts on different time and energy scales. This thesis presents a study of past, current and possible future X-ray outburst activities from Sgr A*, using the hard X-ray telescope NuSTAR. Indication of substantial past Sgr A* activity, similar to that observed in low-luminosity active Galactic nuclei, has come from the Galactic center molecular clouds (GCMCs). Using these X-ray reflecting GCMCs, I have studied the characters of past Sgr A* X-ray outbursts. The current X-ray quiescence of Sgr A* is punctuated by directly detectable flares. The radiation mechanism and physical process of these X-ray flares are poorly understood. From about 1 Ms NuSTAR observations of Sgr A*, I collected nine bright X-ray flares. I studied their timing behavior and the correlation between flares' strengths and their spectra. Future Sgr A* X-ray activity could increase due to the infall of a gas cloud G2 into this SMBH. Finally, I present the Galactic center cosmic-ray population revealed by non-thermal X-ray filaments and its connection to Sgr A* outbursts.

This thesis presents an observational study of molecular abundances in the dense cores of 27 prominent molecular clouds in the southern galactic plane.The molecular abundances and physical conditions in dense condensations have been derived from millimetre-wavelength observations of molecular rotational transitions.The study has produced a comprehensive data set of transition intensities and abundances for 10 different molecules in bright southern molecular clouds, and the general characteristics of emissions from these molecules such as optical depth, excitation and relative abundances are discussed. A comparison of different methods of calculating molecular hydrogen column density from observations of carbon monoxide emission is included.Both the analysis and the data collected provide an excellent starting point for further observational and theoretical studies of molecular clouds in the southern Milky Way utilising new instruments such as the millimeter-wave upgrade to the Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Attacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA). / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this thesis, I explore the rate at which molecular gas is converted to stars through detailed studies of a sample of molecular clouds in the Milky Way, IFU spatially resolved observations of gas-rich nearby interacting galaxies, as well as the environmental dependence of star formation and galaxy morphology in a galaxy supercluster. This thesis is composed of three individual projects that investigate nearby star formation within the local 500 pc of our Sun, to neighboring extreme star forming environments of interacting starburst galaxies, and finally studying how star formation varies with galaxy morphology in a galaxy supercluster a z~0.165. I discuss the relation between the star formation rate (SFR) and molecular gas surface densities (e.g., Schmidt-Kennicutt relation) in Galactic star forming regions and find there is a discrepancy between my study and extragalactic relations. The discrepancy is attributed to extragalactic measurements that are averaged over large >kpc scales and include star forming molecular gas (above some threshold) and molecular gas the is not dense enough to form stars. I find a steep increase in the Galactic SFR-gas surface density relation indicative of a threshold for efficient star formation that is best fit to a broken power law with a linear slope above 129 Msun pc⁻². I introduce the VIRUS-P Investigation of the eXtreme ENviroments of Starbursts (VIXENS) project which is a survey of interacting is a large integral field unit survey of nearby infrared bright (L_IR>3x10¹⁰ Lsun) interacting/starburst galaxies. The main goal of VIXENS is to investigate the relation between star formation and gas content on spatially resolved scales of ~0.1-1 kpc in the extreme star forming environments of interacting/starburst galaxies. The VIXENS sample is composed of systems in a range interaction stages with morphological signatures from early phase (close pairs) to late stage mergers (single system with multiple nuclei), SFRs, and gas surface densities. I highlight the first results from the VIXENS survey in the late interaction phase galaxy merger Arp 299. I find 1.3 kpc regions in Arp 299 to lie along the SFR-gas surface density relation found for mergers at high redshift, but this relation is highly dependent on the CO to molecular hydrogen (H₂) conversion factor. I find evidence for a Galactic CO-to-H₂ conversion factor using metallicity and dust temperature measurements, which would place 1.3 kpc regions in the Arp 299 merger in between the high redshift and Kennicutt-Schmidt relations. Comparing the SFR to dense gas surface densities as traced by HCN and HCO⁺, I find an agreement between the spatially resolved measurements and that found on global scales in spirals and (ultra)luminous infrared galaxies. Finally, I present an investigation of the influence of environment on frequency, distribution, color, and star formation properties of galaxy mergers and non-interacting galaxies in the Abell 901/902 supercluster at z~0.165. I find galaxy mergers be preferentially blue in color and have an enhanced SFR by a factor of ~2 compared to non-interacting galaxies. This result may be due to a decrease in galaxy velocity dispersion in the cluster outskirt, favoring galaxy-galaxy interactions, or to interacting galaxies that are part of groups or field galaxies being accreted along cosmological filaments by the clusters. I compare to N-body simulations of groups and field galaxies accreting onto the clusters and find the fraction of mergers are similar to that predicated at group overdensities. I find the SFR of galaxies in the supercluster to be depressed compared to field galaxies in both the core and cluster outskirts, suggesting that an environmental process such as ram pressure stripping is effective throughout the cluster. The results of a modest SFR enhancement and a low merger fraction culminate in my finding that mergers contribute only a small fraction (between 10% and 15%) of the total SFR density of the Abell 901/902 clusters. / text

This document describes study of an active star forming region in our galaxy (the Milky Way) known as W22. Physical conditions in these regions can help us in understanding star formation processes in the universe and hence the structure and evolution of the universe. Zeeman effect measurements in 18 cm OH absorption line were carried out in order to estimate the line of sight magnetic field strength in the molecular cloud associated with this star forming region. Other physical parameters such as hydrogen column density, optical depth, critical magnetic field were also determined from these measurements. The region was mapped at 18 cm and the distribution of molecular gas within this star forming complex was described.

Spin-orbit coupling and the related effects of A-doubling and spin-splitting have been well known to spectroscopists for some considerable time. The importance of these phenomena stems from the advent of radioastronomy and the study of the interstellar medium. Identification of the molecules, and the molecular transitions, in the interstellar dust clouds is necessary for an understanding of the cooling process by which these clouds can contract to form new stars.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2001. / "A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Western Sydney." Includes appendices. Bibliography : p. 137-142.