The Turbulent-Fragmentation Model of Star Formation

The turbulent nature of the interstellar medium can be viewed as an
opportunity to model the global outcome of the star formation process,
namely the star formation rate and the stellar initial mass function.
I will discuss the observational evidence for the nature and the
effect of supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds. I will then
present a simple model for the star formation rate and the stellar
initial mass function, based on known statistical properties of the
turbulence. Model assumptions are based on high resolution
simulations, which are themselves tested by a direct comparison with
observations.