Massive stars in massive clusters II: Disruption of bound clusters by photoionization

By J. Dale, Barbara Ercolano, Ian A. Bonnell. 2012

191 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an SPH parameter study of the dynamical effect of photoionization from O--type stars on star--forming clouds of a range of masses and sizes during the time window before supernovae explode. Our model clouds all have the same degree of turbulent support initially, the ratio of turbulent kinetic energy to gravitational potential energy being set to $E_{\rm kin}/|E_{\rm pot}|$=0.7. We allow the clouds to form stars and study the dynamical effects of the ionizing radiation from the massive stars or clusters born within them. We find that dense filamentary structures and accretion flows limit the quantities of gas that can be ionized, particularly in the higher density clusters. More importantly, the higher escape velocities in our more massive (10$^{6}$M$_{\odot}$) clouds prevent the HII regions from sweeping up and expelling significant quantities of gas, so that the most massive clouds are largely dynamically unaffected by ionizing feedback. However, feedback has a profound effect on the lower--density 10$^{4}$ and 10$^{5}$M$_{\odot}$ clouds in our study, creating vast evacuated bubbles and expelling tens of percent of the neutral gas in the 3Myr timescale before the first supernovae are expected to detonate, resulting in clouds highly porous to both photons and supernova ejecta.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/70df3d7e776c64a1b503648b5e152ef36f28ba5e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Devriendt
2. A. Slyz
3. T. Naab
4. Ralf Klessen
5. J. Rosdahl
6. Jérémy Blaizot
7. E. Vázquez-Semadeni
8. S. Glover

Citations in the corpus

• Global hierarchical collapse in molecular clouds. Towards a comprehensive scenario (2019, background): “…decaying turbulent velocity fields confirm that photoionising radiation appears incapable of destroying clouds more massive than 105M⊙ (e.g., Dale et al. 2012, 2013), although simulations also suggested that radiation pressure would be less effective than simple 1D models predicted,…”
• The Formation and Destruction of Molecular Clouds and Galactic Star Formation (2015, background): “Dale et al. (2012, 2013) have done extensive three dimensional simulations ofstar cluster formation with ionization or stellar wind feedbackand shown that the effects of photo-ionization and stellar winds are limited in quenching the star formation in massive molecular clouds (see also Walch et al.…”
• Fluctuating feedback-regulated escape fraction of ionizing radiation in low-mass, high-redshift galaxies (2017, background): “Using high resolution simulations of molecular clouds with radiative feedback, Dale et al. (2012) found that only a fraction of the photons emitted during the lifetime of a cloud will escape to the more diffuse ISM, and that fraction varies from ∼ 7% to ∼ 90% depending on the properties of the…”
• Before the first supernova: combined effects of H II regions and winds on molecular clouds (2014, unknown): “In a series of recent papers, we have simulated the isolated effects of photoionizing radiation [Dale et al. (2012b), Dale et al. (2012a), Dale et al. (2013b) and Dale et al. (2013a), hereafter Papers I–IV] or stellar winds [Dale et al. (2013), hereafter Paper V] on a parameter–space of model…”
• The energy and momentum input of supernova explosions in structured and ionized molecular clouds (2014, background): “More massive, or very dense MCs cannot be dispersed efficiently if their escape velocity is above the velocity of the ionised gas ∼ 8 km s−1 (Matzner 2002; Dale et al. 2012).”
• On the fraction of star formation occurring in bound stellar clusters (2012, background): “However, recent work has shown that actually radiative feedback may be the responsible mechanism, especially on small scales (Thompson et al. 2005; Fall et al. 2010; Murray et al. 2010; Dale et al. 2012).”
• Dispersal of molecular clouds by ionizing radiation (2012, result): “These conclusions have recently been confirmed in 3D SPH simulations by Dale et al. (2012), who study star-cluster forming clouds with 104 to 106 M ; their lower mass clouds are comparable with the ones we investigate in the current study.”