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Journal article
Early evolution and three-dimensional structure of embedded star clusters
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, v 521(1), p1338
May 2023
Abstract
We perform simulations of star cluster formation to investigate the morphological evolution of embedded star clusters in the earliest stages of their evolution. We conduct our simulations with Torch, which uses the Amuse framework to couple state-of-the-art stellar dynamics to star formation, radiation, stellar winds, and hydrodynamics in Flash. We simulate a suite of 10(4) M-circle dot clouds at 0.0683 pc resolution for similar to 2 Myr after the onset of star formation, with virial parameters alpha = 0.8, 2.0, 4.0 and different random samplings of the stellar initial mass function and prescriptions for primordial binaries. Our simulations result in a population of embedded clusters with realistic morphologies (sizes, densities, and ellipticities) that reproduce the known trend of clouds with higher initial alpha having lower star formation efficiencies. Our key results are as follows: (1) Cluster mass growth is not monotonic, and clusters can lose up to half of their mass while they are embedded. (2) Cluster morphology is not correlated with cluster mass and changes over similar to 0.01 Myr time-scales. (3) The morphology of an embedded cluster is not indicative of its long-term evolution but only of its recent history: radius and ellipticity increase sharply when a cluster accretes stars. (4) The dynamical evolution of very young embedded clusters with masses less than or similar to 1000 M-circle dot is dominated by the overall gravitational potential of the star-forming region rather than by internal dynamical processes such as two- or few-body relaxation.
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- Title
- Early evolution and three-dimensional structure of embedded star clusters
- Publication Details
- MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, v 521(1), p1338
- Publisher
- OXFORD UNIV PRESS; OXFORD
- Grant note
- We warmly thank Marta Reina-Campos and James Wadsley for useful discussion. CCC is supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). CCC also acknowledges funding from a Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology (QEII-GSST) for the 2021-2022 academic year. AS and WEH are supported by NSERC. SA is grateful for funding from NSF grant AST-2009679. BP is supported through a fellowship from the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics at the University of Heidelberg (IMPRS-HD). AT was partly supported by NASA FINESST 80NSSC21K1383. AT was also supported through a NASA Cooperative Agreement awarded to the New York Space Grant Consortium. AT, MMML, and SLWM were partly supported by NSF grant AST18-15461. SLWM was also supported by NSF grant AST18-14772. MW acknowledges funding from NOVA under project number 10.2.5.12.The simulations were conducted on the Digital Research Alliance of Canada supercomputer Graham under the resource allocation RRG #4398: The Formation of Star Clusters in a Galactic Context, and on the supercomputer Cartesius under the Dutch National Supercomputing Center SURF grant 15520. In addition to the software cited in-text, we have made use of the matplotlib (Hunter 2007), numpy (Harris et al. 2020), scipy (Virtanen et al. 2020), and yt (Turk et al. 2011) Python packages for plotting and analysis.
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Drexel University
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000961957300029
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85161501582
- Other Identifier
- 991021861311104721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Astronomy & Astrophysics