The Formation and Early Evolution of Young Massive Clusters

Understand

We review the formation and early evolution of the most massive and dense young stellar clusters, focusing on the role they can play in our understanding of star and planet formation as a whole.

• Young massive cluster (YMC) progenitor clouds in the Galactic Center can accumulate to a high enough density without forming stars that the initial protostellar densities are close to the final stellar density.
• For this to hold in the disk, the time scale to accumulate the gas to such high densities must be much shorter than the star formation timescale.
• Otherwise the gas begins forming stars while it is being accumulated to high density.