Star formation via interaction of shocks with molecular clouds

One mechanism whereby regions of molecular clouds can become locally unstable to collapse and form stars is shock compression. Here the authors investigate the compression arising from a shock (from a supernova remnant for example) overrunning a molecular cloud and determine under what conditions it becomes locally unstable to gravitational collapse. Preliminary results from 3-D hydrodynamic simulations (using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics and Tree Code Gravity) are presented