The impact of a massive star cluster on its surrounding matter in the Antennae overlap region

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA and VLT observations to investigate how feedback from a young, massive super star cluster in the Antennae galaxies influences its surrounding matter, revealing early cloud dispersal and outflow processes.

Contribution

It provides observational evidence of feedback mechanisms in a super star cluster, highlighting early cloud dispersal and outflows, which advances understanding of cluster formation processes.

Findings

Most parent cloud has been blown away within ~1 Myr.

High velocity gas indicates outflows from the cluster.

Star formation efficiency exceeds 17%, below the threshold for bound cluster formation.

Abstract

Super star clusters (SSCs), likely the progenitors of globular clusters, are one of the most extreme forms of star formation. Understanding how SSCs form is an observational challenge. Theoretical studies establish that, to form such clusters, the dynamical timescale of their parent clouds has to be shorter than the timescale of the disruption of their parent clouds by stellar feedback. However, due to insufficient observational support, it is still unclear how feedback from SSCs acts on their surrounding matter. Studying feedback in SSCs is essential to understand how such clusters form. Based on ALMA and VLT observations, we study this process in a SSC in the overlap region of the Antennae galaxies. We analyze a unique massive (~10^7 Msun) and young (1-3.5 Myr) SSC, still associated with compact molecular and ionized gas emission. The cluster has two CO velocity components, a low velocity one spatially associated with the cluster and a high velocity one distributed in a bubble-like shape around the cluster. Our results on the low velocity component suggest that this gas did not participate in the formation of the SSC. We propose that most of the parent cloud has already been blown away, accelerated at the early stages of the SSC evolution by radiation pressure, in a timescale ~1 Myr. The high velocity component may trace outflowing molecular gas from the parent cloud. Supporting evidence is found in shock heated H2 gas. The low velocity component may be gas that was near the SSC when it formed but not part of its parent cloud or clumps that migrated from the SGMC environment. This gas would be dispersed by stellar winds and supernova explosions. Within ~100 pc from the cluster, we estimate SFE>17%, smaller than the theoretical limit of 30% needed to form a bound cluster. Further higher spatial resolution observations are needed to test and quantify our proposed scenario.