Star formation triggered by feedback from massive stars

Abstract

Massive stars significantly affect their surrounding. During their lifetime of a few million years, they emit ionising radiation and drive a fast stellar wind before they finally explode as a supernova. These powerful processes may sweep up the surrounding interstellar matter and trigger new star formation or lead to the dispersal of the ambient medium. Hence massive star feedback may have a positive or a negative effect on the overall star formation efficiency of a molecular cloud. In this contribution I review observational and theoretical work on triggered star formation. Implications on the relative importance of triggered (vs. spontaneous) star formation are discussed.