No Arabic abstract
We analyse N-body and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations of young star-forming regions to search for differences in the spatial distributions of massive stars compared to lower-mass stars. The competitive accretion theory of massive star formation posits that the most massive stars should sit in deeper potential wells than lower-mass stars. This may be observable in the relative surface density or spatial concentration of the most massive stars compared to other, lower-mass stars. Massive stars in cool--collapse N-body models do end up in significantly deeper potentials, and are mass segregated. However, in models of warm (expanding) star-forming regions, whilst the massive stars do come to be in deeper potentials than average stars, they are not mass segregated. In the purely hydrodynamical SPH simulations, the massive stars do come to reside in deeper potentials, which is due to their runaway growth. However, when photoionisation and stellar winds are implemented in the simulations, these feedback mechanisms regulate the mass of the stars and disrupt the inflow of gas into the clouds potential wells. This generally makes the potential wells shallower than in the control runs, and prevents the massive stars from occupying deeper potentials. This in turn results in the most massive stars having a very similar spatial concentration and surface density distribution to lower-mass stars. Whilst massive stars do form via competitive accretion in our simulations, this rarely translates to a different spatial distribution and so any lack of primordial mass segregation in an observed star-forming region does not preclude competitive accretion as a viable formation mechanism for massive stars.
Base on about 4,500 large tangential velocity ($V_mathrm{tan}>0.75V_mathrm{esc}$) with high-precision proper motions and $5sigma$ parallaxes in Gaia DR2 5D information derived from parallax and proper motion, we identify more than 600 high velocity stars with $50%$ unbound probability. Of these, 28 nearby (less than 6 kpc) late-type Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) with over $99%$ possibility of unbound are discovered. In order to search for the unbound stars from the full Gaia DR2 6D phase space information derived from parallax, proper motion and radial velocity, we also identify 28 stars from the total velocity ($V_mathrm{gc}>0.75V_mathrm{esc}$) that have probabilities greater than $50%$ of being unbound from the Galaxy. Of these, only three have a nearly $99%$ probabilities of being unbound. On the whole HVSs subsample, there is 12 sources reported by other surveys. We study the spatial distribution of angular positions and angular separation of HVSs. We find the unbound HVSs are spatially anisotropic that is most significant in the Galactic longitude at more than $3sigma$ level, and lower unbound probability HVSs are systematically more isotropic. The spatial distribution can reflect the origin of HVSs and we discuss the possible origin link with the anisotropy.
We study the formation of very metal-poor stars under protostellar radiative feedback effect. We use cosmological simulations to identify low-mass dark matter halos and star-forming gas clouds within them. We then follow protostar formation and the subsequent long-term mass accretion phase of over one million years using two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. We show that the critical physical process that sets the final mass is formation and expansion of a bipolar HII region. The process is similar to the formation of massive primordial stars, but radiation pressure exerted on dust grains also contributes to halting the accretion flow in the low-metallicity case. We find that the net feedback effect in the case with metallicity $Z = 10^{-2}~Z_{odot}$ is stronger than in the case with $Z sim 1~Z_{odot}$. With decreasing metallicity, the radiation pressure effect becomes weaker, but photoionization heating of the circumstellar gas is more efficient owing to the reduced dust attenuation. In the case with $Z = 10^{-2}~Z_{odot}$, the central star grows as massive as 200 solar-masses, similarly to the case of primordial star formation. We conclude that metal-poor stars with a few hundred solar masses can be formed by gas accretion despite the strong radiative feedback.
We review the observational evidence for dust formation in Wolf-Rayet binary systems and in Type II Supernova ejecta. Existing theoretical models describing the condensation of solids in carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet stars and in Supernovae close by and at high redshift are discussed. We describe new modeling of carbon- and oxygen-based grain nucleation using a chemical kinetic approach applied to the ejecta of massive pair-instability Supernovae in the early universe. Finally, dust formation processes in colliding wind regions of WC binary systems are discussed.
Recent discoveries have put the picture of stellar clusters being simple stellar populations into question. In particular, the color-magnitude diagrams of intermediate age (1-2 Gyr) massive clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) show features that could be interpreted as age spreads of 100-500 Myr. If multiple generations of stars are present in these clusters then, as a consequence, young (<1 Gyr) clusters with similar properties should have age spreads of the same order. In this paper we use archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data of eight young massive LMC clusters (NGC 1831, NGC 1847, NGC 1850, NGC 2004, NGC 2100, NGC 2136, NGC 2157 and NGC 2249) to test this hypothesis. We analyzed the color-magnitude diagrams of these clusters and fitted their star formation history to derive upper limits of potential age spreads. We find that none of the clusters analyzed in this work shows evidence for an extended star formation history that would be consistent with the age spreads proposed for intermediate age LMC clusters. Tests with artificial single age clusters show that the fitted age dispersion of the youngest clusters is consistent with spreads that are purely induced by photometric errors. As an additional result we determined a new age of NGC 1850 of ~100 Myr, significantly higher than the commonly used value of about 30 Myr, although consistent with early HST estimates.
We obtain Keck HIRES spectroscopy of HVS5, one of the fastest unbound stars in the Milky Way halo. We show that HVS5 is a 3.62 +- 0.11 Msun main sequence B star at a distance of 50 +- 5 kpc. The difference between its age and its flight time from the Galactic center is 105 +-18(stat)+-30(sys) Myr; flight times from locations elsewhere in the Galactic disk are similar. This 10^8 yr `arrival time between formation and ejection is difficult to reconcile with any ejection scenario involving massive stars that live for only 10^7 yr. For comparison, we derive arrival times of 10^7 yr for two unbound runaway B stars, consistent with their disk origin where ejection results from a supernova in a binary system or dynamical interactions between massive stars in a dense star cluster. For HVS5, ejection during the first 10^7 yr of its lifetime is ruled out at the 3-sigma level. Together with the 10^8 yr arrival times inferred for three other well-studied hypervelocity stars (HVSs), these results are consistent with a Galactic center origin for the HVSs. If the HVSs were indeed ejected by the central black hole, then the Galactic center was forming stars ~200 Myr ago, and the progenitors of the HVSs took ~100 Myr to enter the black holes loss cone.