The impact of radiation pressure and from massive stars on the turbulent interstellar medium in extreme environments

• Applicant: Dr. Thorsten Naab
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 203268199

For the highly turbulent interstellar medium in extreme environments, like gas-rich high-redshift disks and interacting galaxies, radiation pressure - the absorption of starlight by interstellar gas/dust – is supposed to dominate cloud disruption and can be the main launching mechanism of observed large scale galactic winds. The proposed project is aimed at understanding this fundamental wind driving process with numerical simulations at its origin, the parental giant molecular cloud which is not accessible by direct observations. We propose to systematically investigate the impact of energy input from massive short-lived stars by ionization and radiation pressure on the turbulent ISM and will use high-resolution three-dimensional simulations - including gravity, hydrodynamics, and radiation transfer - of the feedback from massive stars embedded in turbulent molecular clouds including, for the first time, a self-consistent modeling of the coupling of starlight to the interstellar gas/dust and the resulting momentum input. The effect of this feedback process on the star formation efficiency, cloud lifetimes, turbulence, and wind driving will be investigated.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1573: Physics of the Interstellar Medium