High-mass star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud triggered by colliding HI flows

TL;DR

This study investigates how colliding HI gas flows in the Large Magellanic Cloud trigger high-mass star formation, highlighting the role of gas pressure in star formation activity.

Contribution

It provides evidence that colliding HI flows across the entire LMC disk significantly influence high-mass star formation, emphasizing the importance of gas pressure.

Findings

74% of O/WR stars are located in the collision-compressed gas.

Positive correlation between high-mass star count and gas pressure.

Collision-driven gas compression is linked to active star-forming regions.

Abstract

The galactic tidal interaction is a possible mechanism to trigger the active star formation in galaxies. The recent analyses using the HI data in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) proposed that the tidally driven HI flow, the L-component, is colliding with the LMC disk, the D-component, and is triggering high-mass star formation toward the active star-forming regions R136 and N44. In order to explore the role of the collision over the entire LMC disk, we investigated the I-component, the collision-compressed gas between the L- and D-components, over the LMC disk, and found that 74% of the O/WR stars are located toward the I-component, suggesting their formation in the colliding gas. We compared four star-forming regions (R136, N44, N11, N77-N79-N83 complex). We found a positive correlation between the number of high-mass stars and the compressed gas pressure generated by collisions, suggesting that the pressure may be a key parameter in star formation.