No Arabic abstract
The Antennae Galaxies is one of the starbursts in major mergers. Tsuge et al. (2020) showed that the five giant molecular complexes in the Antennae Galaxies have signatures of cloud-cloud collisions based on the ALMA archival data at 60 pc resolution. In the present work we analyzed the new CO data toward the super star cluster (SSC) B1 at 14 pc resolution obtained with ALMA, and confirmed that two clouds show complementary distribution with a displacement of $sim$70 pc as well as the connecting bridge features between them. The complementary distribution shows a good correspondence with the theoretical collision model (Takahira et al. 2014), and indicates that SSC B1 having $sim$10$^{6}$ $M$$_{odot}$ was formed by the trigger of a cloud-cloud collision with a time scale of $sim$1Myr, which is consistent with the cluster age. It is likely that SSC B1 was formed from molecular gas of $sim$10$^{7}$ $M$$_{odot}$ with a star formation efficiency of $sim$10 % in 1 Myr. We identified a few places where additional clusters are forming. Detailed gas motion indicates stellar feedback in accelerating gas is not effective, while ionization plays a role in evacuating the gas around the clusters at a $sim$30-pc radius. The results have revealed the details of the parent gas where a cluster having mass similar to a globular is being formed.
The formation mechanism of super star clusters (SSCs), a present-day analog of the ancient globulars, still remains elusive. The major merger, the Antennae galaxies is forming SSCs and is one of the primary targets to test the cluster formation mechanism. We reanalyzed the archival ALMA CO data of the Antennae and found three typical observational signatures of a cloud-cloud collision toward SSC B1 and other SSCs in the overlap region; i. two velocity components with $sim$100 km s$^{-1}$ velocity separation, ii. the bridge features connecting the two components, and iii. the complementary spatial distribution between them, lending support for collisions of the two components as a cluster formation mechanism. We present a scenario that the two clouds with 100 km s$^{-1}$ velocity separation collided, and SSCs having $sim$10$^6$-10$^7$ $M_{rm odot}$ were formed rapidly during the time scale. {We compared the present results with the recent studies of star forming regions in the Milky Way and the LMC, where the SSCs having $sim$10$^4$-10$^5$ $M_{rm odot}$ are located. As a result, we found that there is a positive correlation between the compressed gas pressure generated by collisions and the total stellar mass of SSC, suggesting that the pressure may be a key parameter in the SSC formation.
The ACS and NICMOS have been used to obtain new HST images of NGC 4038/4039 (The Antennae). These new observations allow us to better differentiate compact star clusters from individual stars, based on both size and color. We use this ability to extend the cluster luminosity function by approximately two magnitudes over our previous WFPC2 results, and find that it continues as a single power law, dN/dL propto L^alpha with alpha=-2.13+/-0.07, down to the observational limit of Mv~-7. Similarly, the mass function is a single power law dN/dM propto M^beta with beta=-2.10+/-0.20 for clusters with ages t<3x10^8 yr, corresponding to lower mass limits that range from 10^4 to 10^5 Msun, depending on the age range of the subsample. Hence the power law indices for the luminosity and mass functions are essentially the same. The luminosity function for intermediate-age clusters (i.e., ~100-300 Myr old objects found in the loops, tails, and outer areas) shows no bend or turnover down to Mv~-6, consistent with relaxation-driven cluster disruption models which predict the turnover should not be observed until Mv~-4. An analysis of individual ~0.5-kpc sized areas over diverse environments shows good agreement between values of alpha and beta, similar to the results for the total population of clusters in the system. Several of the areas studied show evidence for age gradients, with somewhat older clusters appearing to have triggered the formation of younger clusters. The area around Knot B is a particularly interesting example, with an ~10-50 Myr old cluster of estimated mass ~10^6 Msun having apparently triggered the formation of several younger, more massive (up to 5x10^6 Msun) clusters along a dust lane.
We study effect of magnetic field on massive dense core formation in colliding unequal molecular clouds by performing magnetohydrodynamic simulations with sub-parsec resolution (0.015 pc) that can resolve the molecular cores. Initial clouds with the typical gas density of the molecular clouds are immersed in various uniform magnetic fields. The turbulent magnetic fields in the clouds consistent with the observation by Crutcher et al. (2010) are generated by the internal turbulent gas motion before the collision, if the uniform magnetic field strength is 4.0 $mu$G. The collision speed of 10 km s$^{-1}$ is adopted, which is much larger than the sound speeds and the Alfv{e}n speeds of the clouds. We identify gas clumps with gas densities greater than 5 $times$ 10$^{-20}$ g cm$^{-3}$ as the dense cores and trace them throughout the simulations to investigate their mass evolution and gravitational boundness. We show that a greater number of massive, gravitationally bound cores are formed in the strong magnetic field (4.0 $mu$G) models than the weak magnetic field (0.1 $mu$G) models. This is partly because the strong magnetic field suppresses the spatial shifts of the shocked layer that should be caused by the nonlinear thin shell instability. The spatial shifts promote formation of low-mass dense cores in the weak magnetic field models. The strong magnetic fields also support low-mass dense cores against gravitational collapse. We show that the numbers of massive, gravitationally bound cores formed in the strong magnetic field models are much larger than the isolated, non-colliding cloud models, which are simulated for comparison. We discuss the implications of our numerical results on massive star formation.
Understanding the mechanism of O star formation is one of the most important issues in current astrophysics. It is also an issue of keen interest how O stars affect their surroundings and trigger secondary star formation. An H,emissiontype{II} region RCW79 is one of the typical Spitzer bubbles alongside of RCW120. New observations of CO $J=$ 1--0 emission with Mopra and NANTEN2 revealed that molecular clouds are associated with RCW79 in four velocity components over a velocity range of 20 km s$^{-1}$. We hypothesize that two of the clouds collided with each other and the collision triggered the formation of 12 O stars inside of the bubble and the formation of 54 low mass young stellar objects along the bubble wall. The collision is supported by observational signatures of bridges connecting different velocity components in the colliding clouds. The whole collision process happened in a timescale of $sim$1 Myr. RCW79 has a larger size by a factor of 30 in the projected area than RCW120 with a single O star, and the large size favored formation of the 12 O stars due to the larger accumulated gas in the collisional shock compression.
We performed new comprehensive $^{13}$CO($J$=2--1) observations toward NGC 2024, the most active star forming region in Orion B, with an angular resolution of $sim$100 obtained with NANTEN2. We found that the associated cloud consists of two independent velocity components. The components are physically connected to the H{sc ii} region as evidenced by their close correlation with the dark lanes and the emission nebulosity. The two components show complementary distribution with a displacement of $sim$0.6 pc. Such complementary distribution is typical to colliding clouds discovered in regions of high-mass star formation. We hypothesize that a cloud-cloud collision between the two components triggered the formation of the late O-type stars and early B stars localized within 0.3 pc of the cloud peak. The duration time of the collision is estimated to be 0.3 million years from a ratio of the displacement and the relative velocity $sim$3 km s$^{-1}$ corrected for probable projection. The high column density of the colliding cloud $sim$10$^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$ is similar to those in the other high-mass star clusters in RCW 38, Westerlund 2, NGC 3603, and M42, which are likely formed under trigger by cloud-cloud collision. The present results provide an additional piece of evidence favorable to high-mass star formation by a major cloud-cloud collision in Orion.