TY  - GEN
AV  - public
UR  - https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/22594/
N2  - Molecular clouds are the sites were stars are born and they play a crucial role in
galactic evolution. Despite their main role on star formation and galaxy evolution,
physics of molecular clouds are still poorly understood. Particularly, the processes
controlling the formation, structure, and evolution of molecular clouds are still a
matter of debate and so are the processes that regulate their star?forming activity.
Previous to the beginning of this thesis, observational studies of molecular
cloud structure and accurate measurements of star?forming activity in molecular
clouds existed only for the Solar neighborhood, proving a very limited range of
Galactic environments. Extending these studies to larger distances is crucial. This
thesis is dedicated to provide the observational assets needed to obtain a Galactic
picture of the processes involved in the molecular cloud structure and star?
formation. We present the first systematic study of molecular cloud structure and
evolution including molecular clouds in nearby spiral arms. We present a census of filamentary?shaped molecular clouds that are thought to be connected to the
spiral Galactic structure. Finally, we also develop a new technique that improves
the quality of the existing observational data to obtain more accurate observational
assets, crucial in the study of molecular cloud structure.
A1  - Abreu Vicente, Jorge
CY  - Graduate School of Fundamental Physics, University of Heidelberg
ID  - heidok22594
TI  - Molecular Cloud Structure at Galactic Scales
Y1  - 2017///
ER  -