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PHANGS: Constraining Star Formation Timescales Using the Spatial Correlations of Star Clusters and Giant Molecular Clouds

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arxiv 2209.02872 v1 pith:GNTJZTFV submitted 2022-09-07 astro-ph.GA

PHANGS: Constraining Star Formation Timescales Using the Spatial Correlations of Star Clusters and Giant Molecular Clouds

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords starclustersgmcscloudsformationhierarchicalacrossenvironments
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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In the hierarchical view of star formation, giant molecular gas clouds (GMCs) undergo fragmentation to form small-scale structures made up of stars and star clusters. Here we study the connection between young star clusters and cold gas across a range of extragalactic environments by combining the high resolution (1") PHANGS-ALMA catalogue of GMCs with the star cluster catalogues from PHANGS-HST. The star clusters are spatially matched with the GMCs across a sample of 11 nearby star-forming galaxies with a range of galactic environments (centres, bars, spiral arms, etc.). We find that after 4-6 Myr the star clusters are no longer associated with any gas clouds. Additionally, we measure the autocorrelation of the star clusters and GMCs as well as their cross-correlation to quantify the fractal nature of hierarchical star formation. Young ($\leq$ 10 Myr) star clusters are more strongly autocorrelated on kpc and smaller spatial scales than the >10 Myr stellar populations, indicating that the hierarchical structure dissolves over time.

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