Star formation in realistic environments

Simulating astrophysical systems like star forming Giant Molecular Clouds and protoplanetary disks with realistic initial and boundary conditions is challenging since the gas flows that are responsible for the formation and evolution of these systems span a large range of scales. I will present results from large dynamic range simulations that connect the galactic scales with the scales for individual star formation.
These simulations use a hyper-Lagrangian refinement technique and I will discuss the advantages and potential pitfalls of this method. I will also discuss how important it is to get the initial and boundary conditions right for calculating the initial mass function of stars and whether we can get away with the approximations typically used in star formation simulations.