Massive Star Feedback and Triggered Star Formation: Confronting multi-wavelength observations of the Carina Nebula with numerical simulations

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Preibisch
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2010 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 161184688

As the most nearby (D=2.3 kpc) southern region with a large population of massive stars (> 65 O-type stars), the Carina Nebula is an ideal site to study violent high-mass star formation and the effects of massive star feedback, via stellar winds, ionizing radiation, and expanding superbubbles, on their surroundings. We are currently performing comprehensive multi-wavelength (X-ray, infrared, & sub-mm) observations of the Carina star-forming complex to study the interaction of the young stars with their molecular environment. In combination with existing HST, Spitzer, MSX, and other data sets, these data will allow us to reveal the complete populations of young stars and protostars and to study their ages, mass functions, spatial distributions and disk properties, and determine the morphology, kinematics, and chemistry of cold molecular clouds and the hot gas in the complex. We will perform a detailed comparison of these data with numerical simulations using our newly developed parallel Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics code (IVINE) that allows an efficient treatment of the effect of ionizing radiation from massive young stars on the turbulent gaseous environment. For the first time, we will include stellar winds in combination with the stellar UV radiative ionization of the molecular gas. This should allow us to obtain new and detailed insights into fundamental processes such as the disruption of molecular clouds by massive stars, the origin of the observed complex pillar-like structures at the interfaces between molecular clouds and HII regions, the effect of stellar feedback on molecular cloud dynamics and turbulence, how ionising radiation and the stellar winds trigger the formation of a second generation of stars and how protostellar disks form and evolve in such an environment.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Andreas Burkert