The role of automated methods for filament finding in understanding the complex relationship between filaments, magnetic fields and star formation

AbstractThe discovery of the ubiquity of filaments in the interstellar medium in the last two decades has begged the question: “What role do filaments play in star formation?” Here we describe how our automated filament finding algorithms can combine with both magnetic field measurements and high-resolution observations of dense cores in these filaments, to provide a statistically large sample to investigate the effect of filaments on star formation. We find that filaments are likely actively accreting mass from the interstellar medium, explaining why some 60% of stars, and all massive stars, form “on-filament”.