An official website of the United States government
Mass segregation is seen in many star clusters, but whether massive stars form in the center of a cluster or migrate there dynamically is still debated.N-body simulations show that early dynamical mass segregation is possible when sub-clusters merge to form a dense core with a small crossing time. However, the effect of gas dynamics on both the formation and dynamics of the stars could inhibit the formation of the dense core. We aim to study the dynamical mass segregation of star cluster models that include gas dynamics and selfconsistently form stars from the dense substructure in the gas. Our models use the TORCH framework, which is based on AMUSE and includes stellar and magnetized gas dynamics, as well as stellar evolution and feedback from radiation, stellar winds, and supernovae. Our models consist of three star clusters forming from initial turbulent spherical clouds of mass 104, 105, 106M⊙and radius 11.7 pc that have final stellar masses of 3.6 × 103M⊙, 6.5 × 104M⊙, and 8.9 × 105M⊙, respectively. There is no primordial mass segregation in the model by construction. All three clusters become dynamically mass segregated at early times via collapse confirming that this mechanism occurs within sub-clusters forming directly out of the dense substructure in the gas. The dynamics of the embedded gas and stellar feedback do not inhibit the collapse of the cluster. We find that each model cluster becomes mass segregated within 2 Myr of the onset of star formation, reaching the levels observed in young clusters in the Milky Way. However, we note that the exact values are highly time-variable during these early phases of evolution. Massive stars that segregate to the center during core collapse are likely to be dynamically ejected, a process that can decrease the overall level of mass segregation again.
more »
« less
A Massive Star Is Born: How Feedback from Stellar Winds, Radiation Pressure, and Collimated Outflows Limits Accretion onto Massive Stars
Abstract Massive protostars attain high luminosities as they are actively accreting and the radiation pressure exerted on the gas in the star’s atmosphere may launch isotropic high-velocity winds. These winds will collide with the surrounding gas producing shock-heated ( T ∼ 10 7 K) tenuous gas that adiabatically expands and pushes on the dense gas that may otherwise be accreted. We present a suite of 3D radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of massive prestellar cores and include radiative feedback from the stellar and dust-reprocessed radiation fields, collimated outflows, and, for the first time, isotropic stellar winds to model how these processes affect the formation of massive stars. We find that winds are initially launched when the massive protostar is still accreting and its wind properties evolve as the protostar contracts to the main sequence. Wind feedback drives asymmetric adiabatic wind bubbles that have a bipolar morphology because the dense circumstellar material pinches the expansion of the hot shock-heated gas. We term this the “wind tunnel effect.” If the core is magnetized, wind feedback is less efficient at driving adiabatic wind bubbles initially because magnetic tension delays their growth. We find that wind feedback eventually quenches accretion onto ∼30 M ⊙ protostars that form from the collapse of the isolated cores simulated here. Hence, our results suggest that ≳30 M ⊙ stars likely require larger-scale dynamical inflows from their host cloud to overcome wind feedback. Additionally, we discuss the implications of observing adiabatic wind bubbles with Chandra while the massive protostars are still highly embedded.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2202249
- PAR ID:
- 10447919
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 941
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 202
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Supermassive stars (SMSs) with masses of 𝑀∗ ≃ 104–105 M⊙ are invoked as possible seeds of high-redshift supermassive black holes, but it remains under debate whether their protostar indeed acquires sufficient mass via gas accretion overcoming radiative feedback. We investigate protostellar growth in dynamically heated atomic-cooling haloes (ACHs) found in recent cosmological simulations, performing three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamical (RHD) simulations that consider stellar evolution under variable mass accretion. We find that one of the ACHs feeds the central protostar at rates exceeding a critical value, above which the star evolves in a cool bloating phase and hardly produces ionizing photons. Consequently, the stellar mass reaches 𝑀∗ 104 M⊙ unimpeded by radiative feedback. In the other ACH, where the mass supply rate is lower, the star spends most of its life as a hot main-sequence star, emitting intense ionizing radiation. Then, the stellar mass growth is terminated around 500 M⊙ by photoevaporation of the circumstellar disk. A series of our RHD simulations provide a formula of the final stellar mass determined either by stellar feedback or their lifetime as a function of the mass supply rate from the parent cloud in the absence of stellar radiation. Combining the results with the statistical properties of SMS-forming clouds in high-redshift quasar progenitor haloes, we construct a top-heavy mass distribution of primordial stars over 𝑀∗ ≃ 100–105 M⊙, approximately following a power-law spectrum of ∝ 𝑀−1.3 with a steeper decline at 𝑀 2 × 104 M . Their massive BH remnants would be ∗∗⊙ further fed via the dense debris disk, powering “milli-quasars" with a bolometric luminosity of 𝐿bol 1043 erg s−1.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)ABSTRACT We discuss a theoretical model for the early evolution of massive star clusters and confront it with the ALMA, radio, and infrared observations of the young stellar cluster highly obscured by the molecular cloud D1 in the nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxy NGC 5253. We show that a large turbulent pressure in the central zones of D1 cluster may cause individual wind-blown bubbles to reach pressure confinement before encountering their neighbours. In this case, stellar winds energy is added to the hot shocked wind pockets of gas around individual massive stars that leads them to meet and produce a cluster wind in time-scales less than 105 yr. In order to inhibit the possibility of cloud dispersal, or the early negative star formation feedback, one should account for mass loading that may come, for example, from pre-main-sequence (PMS) low-mass stars through photoevaporation of their protostellar discs. Mass loading at a rate in excess of 8 × 10−9 M⊙ yr−1 per each PMS star is required to extend the hidden star cluster phase in this particular cluster. In this regime, the parental cloud remains relatively unperturbed, while pockets of molecular, photoionized and hot gas coexist within the star-forming region. Nevertheless, the most likely scenario for cloud D1 and its embedded cluster is that the hot shocked winds around individual massive stars should merge at an age of a few million of years when the PMS star protostellar discs vanish and mass loading ceases that allows a cluster to form a global wind.more » « less
-
ABSTRACT A core-collapse supernova is generated by the passage of a shock wave through the envelope of a massive star, where the shock wave is initially launched from the ‘bounce’ of the neutron star formed during the collapse of the stellar core. Instead of successfully exploding the star, however, numerical investigations of core-collapse supernovae find that this shock tends to ‘stall’ at small radii (≲10 neutron star radii), with stellar material accreting on to the central object through the standing shock. Here, we present time-steady, adiabatic solutions for the density, pressure, and velocity of the shocked fluid that accretes on to the compact object through the stalled shock, and we include the effects of general relativity in the Schwarzschild metric. Similar to previous works that were carried out in the Newtonian limit, we find that the gas ‘settles’ interior to the stalled shock; in the relativistic regime analysed here, the velocity asymptotically approaches zero near the Schwarzschild radius. These solutions can represent accretion on to a material surface if the radius of the compact object is outside of its event horizon, such as a neutron star; we also discuss the possibility that these solutions can approximately represent the accretion of gas on to a newly formed black hole following a core-collapse event. Our findings and solutions are particularly relevant in weak and failed supernovae, where the shock is pushed to small radii and relativistic effects are large.more » « less
-
Stars form in dense cores within molecular clouds, and newly formed stars influence their natal environments. How stellar feedback impacts core properties and evolution has been the subject of extensive investigation. We performed a hierarchical clustering (dendrogram) analysis of a STARFORGE (STAR FORmation in Gaseous Environments) simulation, modelling a giant molecular cloud to identify gas overdensities (cores) and study changes in their radius, mass, velocity dispersion, and virial parameter with respect to stellar feedback. We binned these cores on the basis of the fraction of gas affected by protostellar outflows, stellar winds, and supernovae and analysed the property distributions for each feedback bin. We find that cores that experience more feedback influence are smaller. Feedback notably enhances the velocity dispersion and virial parameter of the cores, more so than it reduces their radius. This is also evident in the linewidth–size relation, according to which cores in higher-feedback bins exhibit higher velocities than their similarly sized pristine counterparts. We conclude that stellar feedback mechanisms, which impart momentum to the molecular cloud, simultaneously compress and disperse the dense molecular gas.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac9f3d
