The size--density relation of extragalactic HII regions

TL;DR

This study explores the size--density relation in extragalactic HII regions, revealing that dust absorption and initial gas density, rather than evolution, shape this relation, impacting star formation measurements.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the size--density relation is driven by initial conditions and dust effects, not evolutionary processes, highlighting the importance of dust in star formation studies.

Findings

Extragalactic HII regions follow the same size--density relation as Galactic ones.

Dust absorption limits the size of many HII regions, especially dense, compact ones.

Star formation activity may be underestimated when using ionizing photons due to dust obscuration.

Abstract

We investigate the size--density relation in extragalactic HII regions, with the aim of understanding the role of dust and different physical conditions in the ionized medium. First, we compiled several observational data sets for Galactic and extragalactic HII regions and confirm that extragalactic HII regions follow the same size (D)--density (n) relation as Galactic ones. Motivated by the inability of static models to explain this, we then modelled the evolution of the size--density relation of HII regions by considering their star formation history, the effects of dust, and pressure-driven expansion. The results are compared with our sample data whose size and density span roughly six orders of magnitude. We find that the extragalactic size--density relation does not result from an evolutionary sequence of HII regions but rather reflects a sequence with different initial gas densities (``density hierarchy''). Moreover, the size of many HII regions is limited by dust absorption of ionizing photons, rather than consumption by ionizing neutral hydrogen. Dust extinction of ionizing photons is particularly severe over the entire lifetime of compact HII regions with typical gas densities of greater than 10^3 cm^{-3}. Hence, as long as the number of ionizing photons is used to trace massive star formation, much star-formation activity could be missed. Such compact dense environments, the ones most profoundly obscured by dust, have properties similar to ``maximum--intensity starbursts''. This implies that submillimeter and infrared wavelengths may be necessary to accurately assess star formation in these extreme conditions both locally and at high redshift.