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

TL;DR

This study investigates how the combined gravitational effects of gas and stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud influence star formation, showing that including stars improves the correlation between instability and star formation regions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that considering both gas and stellar components provides a better prediction of star-forming regions in the LMC than gas alone.

Findings

85% of young stellar objects are in regions unstable due to gas and stars

Star formation occurs even in some gravitationally stable regions (Q > 1)

Star formation timescale correlates exponentially with gravitational instability strength

Abstract

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 (LMC) considering the gas alone, and considering the combination of collisional gas and collisionless stars. We compare the gravitationally unstable regions with the on-going 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.