Pre and protostelllar cores, from theory to their observability

Stars dominate the energy budget of galaxies. They are the ones that determine the evolution of galaxies over cosmic timescales. When observing the mass distributions of stars, they almost always appear to follow a similar slope from one cluster to another (with a few exceptions, however). Understanding how this distribution, known as the Salpeter distribution, emerges would be a major breakthrough.

Stars form within gas overdensities—called cores—inside molecular clouds. These cores are observed using millimeter and submillimeter telescopes, as well as in numerical simulations.
This thesis aims to address the problem of the stellar mass distribution through a new approach, heavily based on results from numerical experiments, focusing on the key questions: how does a star acquire its mass from a dense core? Can the physics governing star formation be captured by contemporary observatories?