Chris McKee

Title: The Formation of Massive Stars

Abstract: Stars more than about 10 times the mass of the Sun are responsible for creating
most of the heavy elements in the universe, for governing the evolution of galaxies, and
quite possibly for re-ionizing the universe a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
The formation of these stars can be understood as an extension of the theory of
low-mass star formation, generalized to include the effects of interstellar turbulence.
However, a major problem must be overcome: For massive
stars, the outward force due to radiation pressure exceeds the inward force due to gravity;
how can gas accrete onto the protostar in that case? Circumstellar disks, outflow cavities, and 
radiative Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities all contribute to the solution of this problem. 
These conclusions are validated by means of 
3D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of high-mass star formation. The
effects of ionizing radiation and variations in metallicity are also discussed.
Observational predictions include (1) Massive stars should form in cores with
surface densities of order 1 g cm^-2; (2) the stellar initial mass function (IMF) should 
follow the mass function of bound cores in the host molecular cloud, scaled down by a factor 
of a few; (3) massive, turbulent disks should occur around massive protostars;
and (4) the IMF for massive stars is relatively independent of metallicity