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Formation of young massive clusters from turbulent molecular clouds

2015; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: S316 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s1743921316000545

1743-9221

Michiko S. Fujii, Simon Portegies Zwart,

Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena

Abstract We simulate the formation and evolution of young star clusters from turbulent molecular clouds using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics and direct N -body methods. We find that the shape of the cluster mass function that originates from an individual molecular cloud is consistent with a Schechter function with power-law slopes of β = −1.73. The superposition of mass functions turn out to have a power-law slope of < −2. The mass of the most massive cluster formed from a single molecular cloud with mass M g scales with 6.1 M 0.51 g . The molecular clouds that tend to form massive clusters are much denser than those typical found in the Milky Way. The velocity dispersion of such molecular clouds reaches 20km s −1 and it is consistent with the relative velocity of the molecular clouds observed near NGC 3603 and Westerlund 2, for which a triggered star formation by cloud-cloud collisions is suggested.