On the Role of Massive Stars in the Support and Destruction of Giant Molecular Clouds

By C. Matzner. 2001

250 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We argue that massive stars are the dominant sources of energy for the turbulent motions within giant molecular clouds and that the primary agent of feedback is the expansion of H II regions within the cloud volume. This conclusion is suggested by the low efficiency of star formation and corroborated by dynamical models of H II regions. We evaluate the turbulent energy input rate in clouds more massive than 3.7 × 105 M☉, for which gravity does not significantly affect the expansion of H II regions. Such clouds achieve a balance between the decay of turbulent energy and its regeneration in H II regions; summed over clouds, the implied ionizing luminosity and star formation rate are roughly consistent with the Galactic total. H II regions also photoevaporate their clouds: we derive cloud destruction times somewhat shorter than those estimated by Williams & McKee. The upper mass limit for molecular clouds in the Milky Way may derive from the fact that larger clouds would destroy themselves in less than 1 crossing time. The conditions within starburst galaxies do not permit giant molecular clouds to be supported or destroyed by H II regions, and this may explain some aspects of the starburst phenomenon.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd17dbab411a80aae789e4fce27f86d7128d62e5

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Citations in the corpus

Dispersal of molecular clouds by ionizing radiation (2012, background): “…effect by efficiently dispersing the surrounding cloud (Whitworth 1979; Tenorio-Tagle 1979; Bodenheimer et al. 1979; Williams & McKee 1997; Franco et al. 1990; Matzner 2002), thereby terminating star formation, and possibly also unbinding the newly-formed cluster of stars (Dale et al. 2005).”
THE DISRUPTION OF GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUDS BY RADIATION PRESSURE & THE EFFICIENCY OF STAR FORMATION IN GALAXIES (2009, background): “…massive stars, depositi n of momentum by expanding bubbles of photoionized HII region gas, deposition of momentum by the shocked winds from massive stars, and jets from protostars (e.g., McKee & Ostriker 1977; Silk 1997; Wada & Norman 2001; Matzner 2002; Li & Nakamura 2006; Cunningham et al. 2008).”
Accretion-driven turbulence as universal process: galaxies, molecular clouds, and protostellar disks (2009, background): “…(Hunter et al. 1986; Vishniac 1994), or driven by internal sources such as protostellar outflows (Li & Nakamura 2006; Banerjee et al. 2007; Nakamura & Li 2008; Wang et al. 2010) or expanding HII regions (Matzner 2002) or supernovae (Mac Low & Klessen 2004), is still subject to considerable debate.”
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).”
Modeling UV Radiation Feedback from Massive Stars. II. Dispersal of Star-forming Giant Molecular Clouds by Photoionization and Radiation Pressure (2018, background): “2017, ApJ, 850, 112 [1, 3.1, 4.2.2] Rogers, H., & Pittard, J. M. 2013, MNRAS, 431, 1337 [3.1, 6.2] Roman-Duval, J., Jackson, J. M., Heyer, M., Rathborne, J., & Simon, R. 2010, ApJ, 723, 492 [1, 6.2] Rosen, A. L., Krumholz, M. R., Oishi, J. S., Lee, A. T., & Klein, R. I. 2017, JCoPh, 330, 924 [1] Ros”
VERTICAL STRUCTURE OF A SUPERNOVA-DRIVEN TURBULENT, MAGNETIZED INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM (2012, background): “Smaller-scale, lower energy drivers of turbulence and structure formation such as expanding H ii regions (Matzner 2002; Brunt et al. 2009) are not included.”
Theory of Star Formation (2007, background): “…the star formation rate that is consistent with the Kennicutt-Schmidt law (Krumholz & McKee, 2005 — see §3.4) and the full time-dependent virial and energy equations to solve for the evolution of GMCs that are large enough (& 105 M⊙) that H II regions dominate the energy injection (Matzner, 2002).”
Before the first supernova: combined effects of H II regions and winds on molecular clouds (2014, unknown): “…and velocity fields of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), creating bubbles and champagne flows (e.g Whitworth 1979; Tenorio-Tagle 1979), expelling gas from clouds’ potential wells (e.g Matzner 2002) and, in some locations, triggering star formation (e.g Gritschneder et al. 2009; Walch et al. 2011).”
MOMENTUM INJECTION BY SUPERNOVAE IN THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM (2014, background): “…dominates other possible sources of feedback associated with earlier stages of a massive star’s evolution, such as stellar winds, radiation pressure, and H II region expansion (see, e.g., Matzner 2002; Murray et al. 2010; Ostriker & Shetty 2011, for analytic estimates of inputs from these sources).”
Control of star formation by supersonic turbulence (2000, methodology): “Matzner (2002) analytically modeled the effects of ionization on molecular clouds, concluding as well that turbulence driven by Hii regions could support and eventually destroy molecular clouds.”
TOWARD A COMPLETE ACCOUNTING OF ENERGY AND MOMENTUM FROM STELLAR FEEDBACK IN GALAXY FORMATION SIMULATIONS (2012, background): “…are destroyed by their HII regions, driven by ionization at low cluster masses (Walch et al. 2012) and radiation pressure, i.e. momentum transfer from radiation emitted by young massive stars to gas and dust (Murray et al. 2005), and stellar winds at high (Matzner 2002; Krumholz & Matzner 2009a).”
The structure of the interstellar medium of star‐forming galaxies (2011, background): “Lower mass clouds (more prevalent in the MW and SMC models), with lower mean densities, can be similarly disrupted by H II photoionization (e.g. Matzner 2002).”
STAR FORMATION IN DISK GALAXIES. I. FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUDS VIA GRAVITATIONAL INSTABILITY AND CLOUD COLLISIONS (2008, background): “Our derived collision timescales are also shorter than many estimates of GMC lifetimes (e.g. McKee & Williams 1997; Matzner 2002), which suggests that collisions are likely to be important even when feedback mechanisms are taken into account: i.e. an individual GMC is just as likely to have its…”
Massive stars in massive clusters II: Disruption of bound clusters by photoionization (2012, background): “By considering the momentum injected by these various mechanisms, Matzner (2002) concluded that HII region expansion was the most important for clouds with masses & 105M⊙.”
MAXIMALLY STAR-FORMING GALACTIC DISKS. I. STARBURST REGULATION VIA FEEDBACK-DRIVEN TURBULENCE (2011, methodology): “Using the results of Matzner (2002), it can be shown that p∗/m∗ ∝ M −4/7 GMCR 3/7 GMCε −3/7 GMC for MGMC, RGMC, and εGMC the mass, radius, and integrated star-forming efficiency of a GMC, so that GMCs with escape speeds (GMGMC/RGMC) 1/2 > 9 km s−1 or εGMC > 0.01 would have p∗/m∗ ∼ 200 km s−1.”
Radiative feedback and the low efficiency of galaxy formation in low-mass haloes at high redshift (2013, background): “These HII regions expand due to a combination of photoionization and photoheating processes, as well as radiation pressure by the photons emitted from massive stars in young star clusters (Matzner 2002; Krumholz & Matzner 2009; Pellegrini et al. 2011; Walch et al. 2012).”
A CS J = 5 → 4 Mapping Survey Toward High-Mass Star-forming Cores Associated with Water Masers (2003, methodology): “Matzner (2002) calculated a mean mass per association of 440 M⊙ based on the Galactic H II region luminosity function of McKee & Williams (1997).”
Feedback from winds and supernovae in massive stellar clusters – I. Hydrodynamics (2012, unknown): “S R ] 1 1 Fe b 20 Matzner 2002; Wang et al. 2010; Lopez et al. 2011; Pellegrini et al. 2011).”