STAR CLUSTER FORMATION AND FEEDBACK
M. Krumholz (University of California, Santa Cruz, Astronomy, Santa Cruz, United States),
M. Bate (Exeter University, Astrophysics, United Kingdom),
H. Arce (Yale University, Astronomy, United States),
J. Dale (Czech Academy of Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Earth Sciences, Czech Republic),
R. Gutermuth (University of Massachusetts, Department of Astronomy, United States),
R. Klein (University of California, Berkeley, Astronomy, United States),
Z.-Y. Li (University of Virginia, Astronomy, United States),
F. Nakamura (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan),
Q. Zhang (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, United States)
Stars do not generally form in isolation. Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments
newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds.
Feedback from clustered stars is almost certainly responsible for a number of otherwise puzzling facts
about star formation: that it is an inefficient process that proceeds slowly when averaged over galactic
scales; that it produces mostly unbound field stars rather than bound clusters; and that it produces an
IMF with a distinct peak in the range 0.1 - 1 Msun, rather than an IMF dominated by brown dwarfs.
In this review we summarize current observational constraints and theoretical models for the complex
interplay between clustered star formation and feedback.
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