The Effects of Radiative Feedback on Star Cluster Formation and the Galactic Interstellar Medium

Abstract

The majority of stars form in clusters which are themselves birthed in Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs). The radiation produced by clusters during their formative phase heats and ionizes the surrounding gas and drives outflows via radiation pressure. The combination of these processes, referred to as radiative feedback, is a proposed mechanism for limiting the star formation efficiency (SFE) in molecular clouds. In this thesis, we use 3D numerical simulations of turbulent GMCs, completed using the code FLASH and a sophisticated radiative transfer scheme, to explore the effects of radiative feedback on cluster formation and the larger scale interstellar medium (ISM). We present suites of simulations that vary the initial GMC mass from 10^4 to 10^6 M$_{\odot}$ and consider both gravitationally bound and unbound clouds. We find that clusters form within the highly filamentary clouds where they can undergo subsequent merging. Radiative feedback only plays a minor role in lowering the SFE of 10^6 M$_{\odot}$ GMCs. However, it completely disrupts intermediate mass clouds (~10^5 M$_{\odot}$), reducing the SFE by a factor of two. We then examine the escape fraction of UV photons from GMCs --- a quantity relevant to the structure of the ISM and cosmic reionization. We show that the escape fraction is dynamic and can vary by factors of two over short timescales because of the rapid growth and collapse of HII regions. The escape fractions from massive GMCs are typically low (~5%) while intermediate mass models are characterized by escape fractions nearing 100%. We combine our GMC models to represent the escape fraction from a population of clouds in dwarf starburst and spiral-type galaxies. We successfully reproduce the star formation rates in these galaxies and find typical escape fractions of 8% in all cases. These results place important constraints on galactic-scale models studying the ISM and cosmic reionization.