Issue |
A&A
Volume 605, September 2017
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A119 | |
Number of page(s) | 13 | |
Section | Galactic structure, stellar clusters and populations | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201730607 | |
Published online | 20 September 2017 |
Impact of a star formation efficiency profile on the evolution of open clusters
1 Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Mönchhofstr. 12-14, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: beks@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
2 Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Observatory 23, 050020 Almaty, Kazakhstan
3 The International Center of Future Science of the Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin St., 130012 Changchun City, PR China
4 National Astronomical Observatories of China and Key Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20A Datun Rd, Chaoyang District, 100012 Beijing, PR China
5 Main Astronomical Observatory, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 27 Akademika Zabolotnoho St, 03680 Kyiv, Ukraine
Received: 13 February 2017
Accepted: 5 June 2017
Aims. We study the effect of the instantaneous expulsion of residual star-forming gas on star clusters in which the residual gas has a density profile that is shallower than that of the embedded cluster. This configuration is expected if star formation proceeds with a given star-formation efficiency per free-fall time in a centrally concentrated molecular gas clump.
Methods. We performed direct N-body simulations whose initial conditions were generated by the program “mkhalo” from the package “falcON”, adapted for our models. Our model clusters initially had a Plummer profile and are in virial equilibrium with the gravitational potential of the cluster-forming clump. The residual gas contribution was computed based on a local-density driven clustered star formation model. Our simulations included mass loss by stellar evolution and the tidal field of a host galaxy.
Results. We find that a star cluster with a minimum global star formation efficiency (SFE) of 15 percent is able to survive instantaneous gas expulsion and to produce a bound cluster. Its violent relaxation lasts no longer than 20 Myr, independently of its global SFE and initial stellar mass. At the end of violent relaxation, the bound fractions of the surviving clusters with the same global SFEs are similar, regardless of their initial stellar mass. Their subsequent lifetime in the gravitational field of the Galaxy depends on their bound stellar masses.
Conclusions. We therefore conclude that the critical SFE needed to produce a bound cluster is 15 percent, which is roughly half the earlier estimates of 33 percent. Thus we have improved the survival likelihood of young clusters after instantaneous gas expulsion. Young clusters can now survive instantaneous gas expulsion with a global SFEs as low as the SFEs observed for embedded clusters in the solar neighborhood (15–30 percent). The reason is that the star cluster density profile is steeper than that of the residual gas. However, in terms of the effective SFE, measured by the virial ratio of the cluster at gas expulsion, our results are in agreement with previous studies.
Key words: galaxies: star clusters: general / stars: kinematics and dynamics / methods: numerical / stars: formation
© ESO, 2017
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