Frédérique Motte
CNRS Research Director
Menu:
Programs
The main objective of my research is to understand the physical process of star formation. To this end, I devoted my work to observational studies of cloud cores, which represent the earliest phases of the star formation process. In twenty years, my path led me from the formation of a solar-type (low-mass) stars to the formation of massive star clusters and the clouds that gave birth to them. In this context, I have taken the responsibilities of:HOBYS
I am the main coordinator of a systematic study, with the Herschel space observatory, of the closest (1-3 kpc) regions that form massive stars and are representative of the bulk of the star formation in the Milky Way: "HOBYS: the Herschel imaging survey of OB Young Stellar objects" (PIs Motte, Bontemps, & Zavagno; see Motte et al. 2010, 2017). It follows up on a complete study we did in the Cygnus X region (Motte et al. 2007; Schneider et al. 2010; Bontemps et al. 2010; Csengeri et al. 2011a-b). Among the HOBYS highlights is the discovery of ridges, which are high-density filaments forming clusters of high-mass stars (Hill et al. 2011; Nguyen Luong et al. 2011a; Hennemann et al. 2012). Their kinematics and density structure suggest they are influenced by external compression, further feeding through filaments, rotation, and/or magnetic fields (Schneider et al. 2010, 2012, 2015; Peretto et el. 2010; Tremplin et al. 2012; Rivera-Ingraham et al. 2013; Didelon et al. 2015). Ridges also coincide with mini-starburst regions presenting star formation rates worthy of starburst galaxies but on scales of time and space several orders of magnitude smaller (Nguyen et al. 2011a-b, 2016; Louvet et al. 2014). These results suggest a very close link between the formation of massive stars, that of their parent cloud as well as that of their associated star cluster.
W43-HERO
I pilot a large IRAM program, which aims at studying the structure and kinematics of one of the most active star-formation molecular complexes of the Milky-Way: "W43-HERO: Origins of molecular clouds and star formation in W43" (PIs Motte & Schilke). It follows up on the initial study done in the W43-Main region and definition of the W43 complex (Motte et al. 2003; Nguyen et al. 2011b). W43-HERO studies showed that high-mass star-forming ridges form with a very dynamical process associated with cloud collision (Nguyen Luong et al. 2013; Carlhoff et al. 2013; Louvet et al. 2014, 2016; Motte et al. 2014).ALMA-IMF
I also lead a large ALMA program on the origin of the star mass function (IMF) in massive protoclusters: ALMA-IMF. ALMA transforms our view of the origin of the stellar IMF. It follows up on the studies carried out in the regions of our solar neighborhood by, e.g., myself and my colleagues (Motte et al. 1998, 2001; Polychroni et al. 2013; Könyves et al. 2010, 2015) and a pilot study that revealed a Core Mass Function (CMF) which is, at high mass, markedly shallower than the IMF (Motte et al., submitted to Nature Astronomy).
Other collaborations
I have been actively involved in the development of a software that can extract, at several Herschel wavelengths, compact sources buried in a complex environment: Getsources (Men'shchikov et al. 2012), notably building up on the MRE-GCL method I developed (Motte et al. 2003, 2007). Getsources is applied to construct robust catalogs of massive dense cores in the HOBYS clouds (Tigé et al. 2017; Rayner et al. 2017) and cores in ALMA images (Louvet et al. 2014; Motte et al. subm.)
Copyright © 2017 Frédérique Motte · Hosted by IPAG