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Local‐density driven clustered star formation: Model and (some) implications
Author(s) -
Parmentier G.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
astronomische nachrichten
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.394
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-3994
pISSN - 0004-6337
DOI - 10.1002/asna.201412063
Subject(s) - molecular cloud , astrophysics , physics , star formation , stars , star cluster , cluster (spacecraft) , star (game theory) , computer science , programming language
A positive power‐law trend between the local surface densities of molecular gas, Σ gas , and young stellar objects, Σ stars , in molecular clouds of the solar neighbourhood has recently been identified. How it relates to the properties of embedded clusters has so far not been investigated. To that purpose, we model the development of the stellar component of molecular clumps as a function of time and local volume density. Specifically, we associate the observed volume density gradient of molecular clumps to the density‐dependent free‐fall time and we obtain the molecular clump star formation history by applying a constant star formation efficiency per free‐fall time, ϵff. The model reproduces naturally the observed (Σ gas , Σ stars ) relation quoted above. The consequences of our model in terms of cluster survivability after residual star‐forming gas expulsion and in terms of star age distribution in young gas‐free clusters are discussed. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)