Evidence for the Strong Effect of Gas Removal on the Internal Dynamics of Young Stellar Clusters

By N. Bastian, S. Goodwin. 2006

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We present detailed luminosity profiles of the young massive clusters M82-F, NGC 1569-A and NGC 1705-1 which show significant departures from equilibrium (King and Elson, Fall & Freeman) profiles. We compare these profiles with those from N-body simulations of clusters that have undergone the rapid removal of a significant fraction of their mass as a result of gas expulsion. We show that the observations and simulations agree very well with each other, suggesting that these young clusters are undergoing violent relaxation and are also losing a significant fraction of their stellar mass. That these clusters are not in equilibrium can explain the discrepant mass-to-light ratios observed in many young clusters with respect to simple stellar population models without resorting to non-standard initial stellar mass functions as claimed for M82-F and NGC 1705-1. We also discuss the effect of rapid gas removal on the complete disruption of a large fraction of young massive clusters ('infant mortality'). Finally, we note that even bound clusters may lose >50 per cent of their initial stellar mass as a result of rapid gas loss ('infant weight-loss').

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07370392a4b4d061e9ec102e2bd4df1092ccc074

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Citations in the corpus

On the fraction of star formation occurring in bound stellar clusters (2012, background): “…2012 The Author Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society C© 2012 RAS Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/426/4/3008/1014654 by guest on 28 July 2018 Kroupa 2003a,b; Bastian & Goodwin 2006; Goodwin & Bastian 2006; Baumgardt & Kroupa 2007; Parmentier et al. 2008).”
Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation (2007, background): “The question is whether OB associations are superpositions of expanded young clusters (e.g., Kroupa, Aarseth & Hurley 2001, Bastian & Goodwin 2006).”
Star formation through gravitational collapse and competitive accretion (2006, background): “Observations of pre-stellar structures and of young stellar clusters both support this view with the large majority of the total mass being in a distributed gaseous form (Motte et al. 1998; Johnstone et al. 2000, 2004; Lada & Lada 2003; Bastian & Goodwin 2006).”
A double main-sequence turn-off in the rich star cluster NGC 1846 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (2007, background): “…effects of massive stellar winds and supernova explosions expel any remaining gas from a very young star cluster within only a few Myr (e.g., Bastian & Goodwin 2006), leading to strong changes in the cluster’s internal dynamics and structure (see e.g., Goodwin & Bastian 2006, and references…”
The dynamical state of stellar structure in star‐forming regions (2011, background): “…structure following the change of the gravitational potential due to gas expulsion, has been put forward in the literature to explain the observed rapid, mass-independent decline of the number of stellar clusters between ages of a few Myr and several tensof Myr (e.g. Bastian & Goodwin 2006).”
THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES (NGC 4038/4039) REVISITED: ADVANCED CAMERA FOR SURVEYS AND NICMOS OBSERVATIONS OF A PROTOTYPICAL MERGER (2010, background): “…disruption or “infant mortality” associated with the removal of interstellar material (see Hills 1980; Lada, Margulis & Dearborn 1984; Boily & Kroupa 2003; Bastian & Goodwin 2006; and Fall et al. 2010 for theoretical discussions and Lada & Lada 2003, FCW05, and WCF07 for observational evidence).”
Pathways to massive black holes and compact star clusters in pre-galactic dark matter haloes with virial temperatures ≳10 000 K (2008, background): “Note, however, that the observed clusters may have expanded due to the rapid removal of gas (Bastian & Goodwin 2006).”
Kinematics in Young Star Clusters and Associations with Gaia DR2 (2018, background): “Escaping stars may lead to an excess number of stars at larger distances from a system center (e.g., Bastian & Goodwin 2006), and this could contribute to a positive radial expansion gradient.”
A comprehensive set of simulations studying the influence of gas expulsion on star cluster evolution (2007, background): “6 and Bastian & Goodwin (2006)).”
A Massive Cluster of Red Supergiants at the Base of the Scutum-Crux Arm (2007, background): “As a caveat, we note that recent work by Bastian & Goodwin (2006) suggests that young massive clusters (P50Myr, k104M ) can be out of virial equilibrium.”
A Universal Stellar Initial Mass Function? A critical look at variations in extreme environments (2010, background): “The cluster’s velocity dispersion therefore has an additional expansion component, which will cause virial analyses to overestimate its mass (Bastian & Goodwin 2006; Goodwin & Bastian 2006).”