Star Formation in Cooling Flows

Abstract

There is good evidence that the intracluster gas near the centres of many clusters of galaxies is cooling over at least a decade in temperature. This results in an inflow, which is approximately steady where the cooling time of the gas is shorter than the age of the flow. X-ray observations indicate that the cooling gas must have substantial inhomogeneities. Non-linear development of thermal instability causes cooled gas clouds to be deposited throughout the region of the steady cooling flow. The masses of these clouds will be small, typically a lot less than a Jeans mass when they first form. It is argued that the difficulty of forming large clouds in the bulk of a cooling flow inhibits high mass star formation there. There is evidence of some 'normal' star formation near to the centres of many cooling flows where conditions are more favourable for the formation of giant clouds. The initial mass function is strongly affected by the star formation environment in cooling flows.