Star formation in colliding galaxies
P.-A. Duc
Interacting galaxies have been the focus on many studies on star
formation. Their motivation are diverse. First of all, collisions are
known to trigger starbursts though their importance in the global
history of star formation in the Universe might have been
overestimated. Second, interacting systems offer a variety of
environments, including the most extremes ones: from the dense nuclear
region, to the external most regions along the tidal tails. They are
therefore interesting laboratories to a) test the various mechanisms
put forward to trigger SF: shocks following cloud-cloud collisions,
compressive tides, gravity b) test the variations of the
SF
parameters (SFE, IMF, etc ) as a function of the local/large scale
environment.