Title: The Dawn of Star Formation: revealing the initial conditions for massive star formation throughout the Milky Way

Speaker: Ke Wang (European Southern Observatory)

Time: Jan 25 (Thursday), 1:30 pm

Location: Lecture hall, 3rd floor

Abstract: Star formation sets the conditions for the formation of planets and origin of life. On large scales, massive stars drive the evolution of galaxies. The formation of massive stars is a fundamentally important yet unresolved problem in astrophysics. In particular, the initial conditions are not well known due to a lack of in-depth observations. This has led to different assumed initial conditions in debating theoretical models. Thanks to recent multi-wavelength surveys, it is finally feasible to make a Galaxy-wide census of massive clumps (precursors to high-mass star clusters) using high-resolution deep ALMA observations. I present our series studies on infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) that pioneered in characterizing the earliest stages during massive star formation. Built on these, I show how our carefully designed ALMA surveys of starless IRDCs and filaments can uncover deeply embedded core populations for robust cross comparison, and thereby can single out the truly initial conditions across the Galaxy. In the next 5-10 years, we expect that these combined efforts will give definitive answers to key questions in high-mass star formation, and motivate the next generation of star formation models.