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Star cluster formation and feedback in different galactic environments
Ahmad Ali UzKöln, Cologne, DE | |
| Star formation takes place in giant molecular clouds (GMCs), with most stars forming in clusters or associations. How clusters/associations form is still an open problem, as is the cause of differences in their properties. For instance, Young Massive Clusters (YMCs; masses > 104 Msun; ages ~1 Myr) are not as common in the Milky Way (MW) as they are in starburst galaxies. The YMCs that are found in our Galaxy are typically found near the Galactic Centre or bar. We investigate how the formation of such clusters depends on galactic environment using smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. We extract 106 Msun GMC complexes from a MW-like galaxy model, enhance the resolution, and re-run the region with improved methods to track star formation and feedback. This includes ray-traced photoionization which is not possible on galactic scales. We retain galactic potentials and cloud-cloud interactions, which are usually neglected in standard, isolated cloud models. We model GMC complexes from the bar, inner spiral arm, outer spiral arm, and inter-arm region. We find that the relation between star formation rate surface density and gas surface density follows the Kennicutt-Schmidt power law 1.3, with the bar region lying higher up the relation. The inter-arm is 2-3x less star-forming for the same gas surface density as the arm regions. We also find that the bar and inner arm produce smaller, denser, faster-rotating clusters on average, whereas the outer arm and inter-arm regions produce larger clusters more similar to associations. | |
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| Caption: Column density in original galaxy simulation (top left; Pettitt et al. 2020) and zoom-ins from this study (bottom). Top right: star formation rate density vs. gas density in zoom-ins. Points show different time snapshots for each region. | |
| Collaborators: C.L. Dobbs, UExeter, UK T.J.R. Bending, UExeter, UK A.S.M. Buckner, UExeter, UK A.R. Pettitt, CSUS, US |
Key publication
Relevant topic(s): Clustered SF Extra-Galactic SF Feedback |
| Relevant Big Question: How does environment affect star/cluster formation? | |