Infant mortality in the hierarchical merging scenario: Dependency on gas expulsion timescales

TL;DR

This study uses N-body simulations to explore how the timing and rate of gas expulsion affect the survival and evolution of initially sub-structured star clusters, highlighting the stochastic nature of their responses.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the impact of gas expulsion timing and rate on star cluster survival, emphasizing the stochastic response in non-virialized, sub-structured clusters.

Findings

Slower gas expulsion increases cluster survival.

Gas expulsion before one crossing time leads to unpredictable cluster response.

The timing of gas expulsion critically influences cluster evolution.

Abstract

We examine the effects of gas expulsion on initially sub-structured and out-of-equilibrium star clusters. We perform N-body simulations of the evolution of star clusters in a static background potential before adjusting that potential to model gas expulsion. We investigate the impact of varying the rate at which the gas is removed, and the instant at which gas removal begins. Reducing the rate at which the gas is expelled results in an increase in cluster survival. Quantitatively, this dependency is approximately in agreement with previous studies, despite their use of smooth, and virialised initial stellar distributions. However, the instant at which gas expulsion occurs is found to have a strong effect on cluster response to gas removal. We find if gas expulsion occurs prior to one crossing time, cluster response is poorly described by any global parameters. Furthermore in real clusters the instant of gas expulsion is poorly constrained. Therefore our results emphasis the highly stochastic and variable response of star clusters to gas expulsion.