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Cited by 1,048

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 106 of the 106 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A General Theory of Turbulence‐regulated Star Formation, from Spirals to Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies

Open access
Krumholz, Mark R., McKee, Christopher F.·2005·The Astrophysical Journal

Abstract

We derive an analytic prediction for the star formation rate in environments ranging from normal galactic disks to starbursts and ULIRGs in terms of the observables of those systems. Our calculation is based on three premises: (1) star formation occurs in virialized molecular clouds that are supersonically turbulent; (2) the density distribution within these clouds is lognormal, as expected for supersonic isothermal turbulence; and (3) stars form in any subregion of a cloud that is so overdense that its gravitational potential energy exceeds the energy in turbulent motions. We show that a theory based on this model is consistent with simulations and with the observed star formation rate in the Milky Way. We use our theory to derive the Kennicutt-Schmidt law from first principles and make other predictions that can be tested by future observations. We also provide an algorithm for estimating the star formation rate that is suitable for inclusion in numerical simulations.

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Crossref · 10.1086/431734

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Metadata

Authors
Krumholz, M. R., & McKee, C. F.
Venue
The Astrophysical Journal
Published
2005-09
Volume
630
Issue
1
Pages
250-268
ISSN
  • 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
  • 1538-4357
OpenAlex
W2601507719
Cited by
1,048
References
106
FWCI
17.37
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A General Theory of Turbulence‐regulated Star Formation, from Spirals to Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/431734
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Krumholz, M. R., & McKee, C. F. (2005). A General Theory of Turbulence‐regulated Star Formation, from Spirals to Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/431734

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.