The Workshop is devoted to an in-depth examination of complex astrophysical phenomena of star formation via multi-wavelength observations and modeling. From their birth to their death, stars are playing a major role in the chemical evolution of the matter and the energy budget of galaxies via their radiation, their wind, and the supernovae. The complex interplay of physical processes from gas dynamics and cosmochemistry to nuclear physics leading to the formation of protostars in molecular clouds and then their MHD and radiative feedback on the cloud are subject of a great current interest. Despite the great progress of the multi-wavelength sensitive observations and high performance modeling a number of the fundamental issues remain enigmatic yet. This is because the star formation process has a multi-scale nature with a strong non-linear feedback by radiation, MHD flows and non-thermal particles.

The amount of data on star formation obtained recently with the Herschel, HST, Gaia, XMM-Newton, Chandra and Fermi space telescopes with the ground based VLBI, LOFAR, ALMA, VLT and H.E.S.S. observatories is growing fast.  The missions have produced large and  high quality data bases. The forthcoming missions ATHENA, JWST, SPICA, EUCLID and the others will uncover new phenomena in star formation. We will discuss these data and perspective in the view of the current and new developing models.

Among the fundamental issues to study are: The role of gravity in the formation and evolution of molecular clouds. The nature of supersonic and magnetized turbulence in the giant molecular clouds. The role of stellar feedback (supernovae, HII regions, winds) in regulating star formation. The radiation transfer, magnetic fields and gas ionization by cosmic rays. The role of radiation feedback, jets and magnetic fields in star clusters. The origin of the stellar initial mass function and how universal it is across various environments. The origin of first stars and the star formation rate across the cosmic evolution.

These and other aspects of the observations and physics of star formation and related phenomena will be discussed in the workshop and presented in the ISSI Springer book.

Last update: December 3, 2018