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Large-Scale Gravitational Instability and Star Formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud

In English

Författare

  • Chao-Chin Yang
  • Robert A. Gruendl
  • You-Hua Chu
  • Mordecai-Mark Mac Low
  • Yasuo Fukui

Summary, in English

Large-scale star formation in disk galaxies is hypothesized to be driven by global gravitational instability. The observed gas surface density is commonly used to compute the strength of gravitational instability, but according to this criterion, star formation often appears to occur in gravitationally stable regions. One possible reason is that the stellar contribution to the instability has been neglected. We have examined the gravitational instability of the Large Magellanic Cloud considering the gas alone, and considering the combination of collisional gas and collisionless stars. We compare the gravitationally unstable regions with the ongoing star formation revealed by Spitzer observations of young stellar objects. Although only 62% of the massive young stellar object candidates are in regions where the gas alone is unstable, some 85% lie in regions unstable due to the combination of gas and stars. The combined stability analysis better describes where star formation occurs. In agreement with other observations and numerical models, a small fraction of the star formation occurs in regions with gravitational stability parameter Q>1. We further measure the dependence of the star formation timescale on the strength of gravitational instability, and quantitatively compare it to the exponential dependence expected from numerical simulations.

Publiceringsår

2007

Språk

Engelska

Sidor

374-379

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

The Astrophysical Journal

Volym

671

Issue

1

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

American Astronomical Society

Ämne

  • Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Nyckelord

  • Galaxies: ISM Galaxies: Kinematics and Dynamics Galaxies: Stellar Content Galaxies: Magellanic Clouds Stars: Formation

Status

Published