No Arabic abstract
The X-ray emission from a simulated massive stellar cluster is investigated. The emission is calculated from a 3D hydrodynamical model which incorporates the mechanical feedback from the stellar winds of 3 O-stars embedded in a giant molecular cloud clump containing 3240 M$_{odot}$ of molecular material within a 4 pc radius. A simple prescription for the evolution of the stars is used, with the first supernova explosion at t=4.4 Myrs. We find that the presence of the GMC clump causes short-lived attenuation effects on the X-ray emission of the cluster. However, once most of the material has been ablated away by the winds the remaining dense clumps do not have a noticable effect on the attenuation compared with the assumed interstellar medium column. We determine the evolution of the cluster X-ray luminosity, L$_X$, and spectra, and generate synthetic images. The intrinsic X-ray luminosity drops from nearly 10$^{34}$ ergs s$^{-1}$ while the winds are `bottled up, to a near constant value of 1.7$times 10^{32}rm ergs s^{-1}$ between t=1-4 Myrs. L$_X$ reduces slightly during each stars red supergiant stage due to the depressurization of the hot gas. However, L$_X$ increases to $approx 10^{34}rm,ergs s^{-1}$ during each stars Wolf-Rayet stage. The X-ray luminosity is enhanced by 2-3 orders of magnitude to $sim 10^{37}rm ergs s^{-1}$ for at least 4600 yrs after each supernova, at which time the blast wave leaves the grid and the X-ray luminosity drops. The X-ray luminosity of our simulation is generally considerably fainter than predicted from spherically-symmetric bubble models, due to the leakage of hot gas material through gaps in the outer shell. This process reduces the pressure within our simulation and thus the X-ray emission. However, the X-ray luminosities and temperatures which we obtain are comparable to similarly powerful massive young clusters.
We use 3D hydrodynamical models to investigate the effects of massive star feedback from winds and supernovae on inhomogeneous molecular material left over from the formation of a massive stellar cluster. We simulate the interaction of the mechanical energy input from a cluster with 3 O-stars into a giant molecular cloud (GMC) clump containing 3240 solar masses of molecular material within a 4 pc radius. The cluster wind blows out of the molecular clump along low-density channels, into which denser clump material is entrained. We find that the densest molecular regions are surprisingly resistant to ablation by the cluster wind, in part due to shielding by other dense regions closer to the cluster. Nonetheless, molecular material is gradually removed by the cluster wind during which mass-loading factors in excess of several 100 are obtained. Because the clump is very porous, 60-75 per cent of the injected wind energy escapes the simulation domain, with the difference being radiated. After 4.4 Myr, the massive stars in our simulation begin to explode as supernovae. The highly structured environment into which the SN energy is released allows even weaker coupling to the remaining dense material and practically all of the SN energy reaches the wider environment. The molecular material is almost completely dispersed and destroyed after 6 Myr. The escape fraction of ionizing radiation is estimated to be about 50 per cent during the first 4 Myr of the clusters life. A similar model with a larger and more massive GMC clump reveals the same general picture, though more time is needed for it to be destroyed.
We simulate the effects of massive star feedback, via winds and SNe, on inhomogeneous molecular material left over from the formation of a massive stellar cluster. We use 3D hydrodynamic models with a temperature dependent average particle mass to model the separate molecular, atomic, and ionized phases. We find that the winds blow out of the molecular clump along low-density channels, and gradually ablate denser material into these. However, the dense molecular gas is surprisingly long-lived and is not immediately affected by the first star in the cluster exploding.
We investigate the structure and X-ray emission from the colliding stellar winds in massive star binaries. We find that the opening angle of the contact discontinuity (CD) is overestimated by several formulae in the literature at very small values of the wind momentum ratio. We find also that the shocks in the primary (dominant) and secondary winds flare by approx 20 degrees compared to the CD, and that the entire secondary wind is shocked when the wind momentum ratio < 0.02. Analytical expressions for the opening angles of the shocks, and the fraction of each wind that is shocked, are provided. We find that the X-ray luminosity scales with the wind momentum ratio, and that the spectrum softens slightly as the wind momentum ratio decreases.
Strong winds from massive stars are a topic of interest to a wide range of astrophysical fields. In High-Mass X-ray Binaries the presence of an accreting compact object on the one side allows to infer wind parameters from studies of the varying properties of the emitted X-rays; but on the other side the accretors gravity and ionizing radiation can strongly influence the wind flow. Based on a collaborative effort of astronomers both from the stellar wind and the X-ray community, this presentation attempts to review our current state of knowledge and indicate avenues for future progress.
Stellar winds and supernova (SN) explosions of massive stars (stellar feedback) create bubbles in the interstellar medium (ISM) and insert newly produced heavy elements and kinetic energy into their surroundings, possibly driving turbulence. Most of this energy is thermalized and immediately removed from the ISM by radiative cooling. The rest is available for driving ISM dynamics. In this work we estimate the amount of feedback energy retained as kinetic energy when the bubble walls have decelerated to the sound speed of the ambient medium. We show that the feedback of the most massive star outweighs the feedback from less massive stars. For a giant molecular cloud (GMC) mass of 1e5 solar masses (as e.g. found in the Orion GMCs) and a star formation efficiency of 8% the initial mass function predicts a most massive star of approximately 60 solar masses. For this stellar evolution model we test the dependence of the retained kinetic energy of the cold GMC gas on the inclusion of stellar winds. In our model winds insert 2.34 times the energy of a SN and create stellar wind bubbles serving as pressure reservoirs. We find that during the pressure driven phases of the bubble evolution radiative losses peak near the contact discontinuity (CD), and thus, the retained energy depends critically on the scales of the mixing processes across the CD. Taking into account the winds of massive stars increases the amount of kinetic energy deposited in the cold ISM from 0.1% to a few percent of the feedback energy.