Star Formation Histories from Pan-Chromatic Infrared Continuum Surveys

One of the currently most disputed issues in Star Formation is the timeline of the whole process. Is it a “slow” process of cloud assembly which, mediated by magnetic fields, evolve toward turbulence-supported clumps which are eventually super-critical to collapse, e.g. McKee & Tan (2003)? Or do clumps originate in already super-critical state in the post-shock regions of large-scale Galactic converging flows, e.g. Hartmann et al. (2001) with a rapid collapse in a crossing time or so (Elmegreen 2000)? A pan-chromatic 1μm-1mm continuum view of cluster forming regions in their early stages offers access to the most massive members longward of 5-10μm, as well as the low-mass members which instead dominate the emission in the near-IR, offering an interesting potential in stimulating advances in theoretical modelling of clustered star formation, its history and rate.