Feedback from massive stars and gas expulsion from proto-Globular Clusters

TL;DR

This study uses 3D hydrodynamic simulations to demonstrate that stellar feedback in proto-globular clusters effectively expels nearly all gas within 14 million years, supporting theories of multiple stellar generations.

Contribution

First to simulate gas expulsion in proto-globular clusters with realistic OB association distributions using 3D hydrodynamics including feedback and cooling.

Findings

Stellar winds remove about 40% of gas in 3 Myr

Gas is almost entirely expelled (~99%) by 14 Myr

Interaction of feedback bubbles creates channels for gas escape

Abstract

Globular clusters are considerably more complex structures than previously thought, harbouring at least two stellar generations which present clearly distinct chemical abundances. Scenarios explaining the abundance patterns in globular clusters mostly assume that originally the clusters had to be much more massive than today, and that the second generation of stars originates from the gas shed by stars of the first generation (FG). The lack of metallicity spread in most globular clusters further requires that the supernova-enriched gas ejected by the FG is completely lost within ~30 Myr, a hypothesis never tested by means of three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. In this paper, we use 3D hydrodynamic simulations including stellar feedback from winds and supernovae, radiative cooling and self-gravity to study whether a realistic distribution of OB associations in a massive proto-GC of initial mass M_tot ~ 10^7 M_sun is sufficient to expel its entire gas content. Our numerical experiment shows that the coherence of different associations plays a fundamental role: as the bubbles interact, distort and merge, they carve narrow tunnels which reach deeper and deeper towards the innermost cluster regions, and through which the gas is able to escape. Our results indicate that after 3 Myr, the feedback from stellar winds is responsible for the removal of ~40% of the pristine gas, and that after 14 Myr, ~ 99% of the initial gas mass has been removed.