Star formation in metal-poor gas clouds

Understand

Observations of molecular clouds in metal-poor environments typically find that they have much higher star formation rates than one would expect based on their observed CO luminosities and the molecular gas masses that are inferred from them.

• This finding can be understood if one assumes that the conversion factor between CO luminosity and H2 mass is much larger in these low metallicity systems than in nearby molecular clouds.
• However, it is unclear whether this is the only factor at work, or whether the star formation rate of the clouds is directly sensitive to the metallicity of the gas.
• To investigate this, we have performed numerical simulations of the coupled dynamical, chemical and thermal evolution of model clouds with metallicities ranging from 0.01 Z_solar to Z_solar.