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Large-scale star formation in disk galaxies is hypothesized to be driven byglobal gravitational instability. The observed gas surface density is commonlyused to compute the strength of gravitational instability, but according tothis criterion star formation often appears to occur in gravitationally stableregions. One possible reason is that the stellar contribution to theinstability has been neglected. We have examined the gravitational instabilityof the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) considering the gas alone, and consideringthe combination of collisional gas and collisionless stars. We compare thegravitationally unstable regions with the on-going star formation revealed bySpitzer observations of young stellar objects. Although only 62% of the massiveyoung stellar object candidates are in regions where the gas alone is unstable,some 85% lie in regions unstable due to the combination of gas and stars. Thecombined stability analysis better describes where star formation occurs. Inagreement with other observations and numerical models, a small fraction of thestar formation occurs in regions with gravitational stability parameter Q > 1.We further measure the dependence of the star formation timescale on thestrength of gravitational instability, and quantitatively compare it to theexponential dependence expected from numerical simulations.

Large-Scale Gravitational Instability and Star Formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud