The roles of stellar feedback and galactic environment in star-forming molecular clouds
Rey-Raposo, R; Dobbs, C; Agertz, O; et al.Alig, C
Date: 21 October 2016
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Feedback from massive stars is thought to play an important role in the evolution of
molecular clouds. In this work we analyse the effects of stellar winds and supernovae
(SNe) in the evolution of two massive (∼ 106 M ) giant molecular clouds (GMCs): one
gravitationally bound collapsing cloud and one unbound cloud undergoing ...
Feedback from massive stars is thought to play an important role in the evolution of
molecular clouds. In this work we analyse the effects of stellar winds and supernovae
(SNe) in the evolution of two massive (∼ 106 M ) giant molecular clouds (GMCs): one
gravitationally bound collapsing cloud and one unbound cloud undergoing disruption
by galactic shear. These two clouds have been extracted from a large scale galaxy
model and are re-simulated at a spatial resolution of ∼ 0.01 pc, including feedback
from winds, SNe, and the combined effect of both. We find that stellar winds stop
accretion of gas onto sink particles, and can also trigger star formation in the shells
formed by the winds, although the overall effect is to reduce the global star formation
rate of both clouds. Furthermore, we observe that winds tend to escape through the
corridors of diffuse gas. The effect of SNe is not so prominent and the star formation
rate is similar to models neglecting stellar feedback. We find that most of the energy
injected by the SNe is radiated away, but overdense areas are created by multiple
and concurrent SN events especially in the most virialised cloud. Our results suggest
that the impact of stellar feedback is sensitive to the morphology of star forming
clouds, which is set by large scale galactic flows, being of greater importance in clouds
undergoing gravitational collapse.
Physics and Astronomy
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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