Are turbulent spheres suitable initial conditions for star-forming
  clouds?
  To date, most numerical simulations of molecular clouds, and star formation
within them, assume a uniform density sphere or box with an imposed turbulent
velocity field. In this work, we select molecular clouds from galactic scale
simulations as initial conditions, increase their resolution, and re-simulate
them using the SPH code Gadget2. Our approach provides clouds with
morphologies, internal structures, and kinematics that constitute more
consistent and realistic initial conditions for simulations of star formation.
We perform comparisons between molecular clouds derived from a galactic
simulation, and spheres of turbulent gas of similar dimensions, mass and
velocity dispersion. We focus on properties of the clouds such as their
density, velocity structure and star formation rate. We find that the inherited
velocity structure of the galactic clouds has a significant impact on the star
formation rate and evolution of the cloud. Our results indicate that, although
we can follow the time evolution of star formation in any simulated cloud,
capturing the entire history is difficult as we ignore any star formation that
might have occurred before initialisation. Overall, the turbulent spheres do
not match the complexity of the galactic clouds.
