Young Stellar Clusters with a Schuster Mass Distribution - I: Stationary Winds

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of stationary stellar winds driven by young clusters with Schuster density profiles, analyzing how radiative cooling affects wind dynamics and the critical luminosity for thermal instabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a combined semi-analytic and numerical approach to model winds from clusters with generalized Schuster profiles, highlighting the impact of radiative cooling on wind properties and stability.

Findings

Radiative winds have significantly reduced terminal speeds and mechanical luminosity.

The critical luminosity for thermal instability depends on cluster density profile and size.

Stationary wind conditions are characterized for various stellar density distributions.

Abstract

Hydrodynamic models for spherically-symmetric winds driven by young stellar clusters with a generalized Schuster stellar density profile are explored. For this we use both semi-analytic models and 1D numerical simulations. We determine the properties of quasi-adiabatic and radiative stationary winds and define the radius at which the flow turns from subsonic into supersonic for all stellar density distributions. Strongly radiative winds diminish significantly their terminal speed and thus their mechanical luminosity is strongly reduced. This also reduces their potential negative feedback into their host galaxy ISM. The critical luminosity above which radiative cooling becomes dominant within the clusters, leading to thermal instabilities which make the winds non-stationary, is determined, and its dependence on the star cluster density profile, core radius and half mass radius is discussed.