An Investigation of the Loss of Planet-Forming Potential in Intermediate Sized Young Embedded Star Clusters

TL;DR

This study analyzes how background UV radiation in intermediate-sized star clusters can inhibit planet formation by evaporating circumstellar disks, highlighting the significant impact of dust attenuation on this process.

Contribution

It provides a statistical analysis of UV flux distributions in clusters with 100-1000 stars, revealing the potential suppression of planet formation due to environmental radiation effects.

Findings

Approximately half of the systems could have inhibited giant planet formation without dust.

Dust attenuation reduces the UV impact, increasing the likelihood of planet formation.

Variability in UV flux is significant due to the steep initial mass function.

Abstract

A large fraction of stars forming in our galaxy are born within clusters embedded in giant molecular clouds. In these environments, the background UV radiation fields impinging upon circumstellar disks can often dominate over the radiation fields produced by each disk's central star. As a result, this background radiation can drive the evaporation of circumstellar disks and lead to the loss of planet forming potential within a cluster. This paper presents a detailed analysis of this process for clusters whose stellar membership falls within the range $100 \le N \le 1000$. For these intermediate-sized clusters, the background UV field is often dominated by the most massive stellar member. Due to the steep slope of the initial mass function, the amount of background UV light that bathes clusters of similar size displays significant variance. As a result, we perform a statistical analysis of this problem by calculating distributions of FUV flux values impinging upon star/disk systems for several cluster scenarios. We find that in the absence of dust attenuation, giant planet formation would likely be inhibited in approximately half of systems forming within intermediate-sized clusters regardless of stellar membership. In contrast, the presence of dust can significantly lower this value, with the effect considerably more pronounced in more populated clusters.