Kazuhiro Shima

Isolating signatures of major cloud-cloud collisions using position-velocity diagrams

Collisions between giant molecular clouds are a potential mechanism for triggering the formation of massive stars, or even super star clusters. The trouble is identifying this process observationally and distinguishing it from other mechanisms. We produce synthetic position-velocity diagrams from models of: cloud-cloud collisions, non-interacting clouds along the line of sight, clouds with internal radiative feedback and a more complex cloud evolving in a galactic disc, to try and identify unique signatures of collision. We find that a broad bridge feature connecting two intensity peaks, spatially correlated but separated in velocity, is a signature of a high velocity cloud-cloud collision. We show that the broad bridge feature is resilient to the effects of radiative feedback, at least to around 2.5Myr after the formation of the first massive (ionising) star. However for a head on 10km/s collision we find that this will only be observable from 20-30 per cent of viewing angles. Such broad-bridge features have been identified towards M20, a very young region of massive star formation that was concluded to be a site of cloud-cloud collision by Torii et al (2011), and also towards star formation in the outer Milky Way by Izumi et al (2014).

Isolating signatures of major cloud–cloud collisions – II. The lifetimes of broad bridge features

We investigate the longevity of broad bridge features in position-velocity diagrams that appear as a result of cloud-cloud collisions. Broad bridges will have a finite lifetime due to the action of feedback, conversion of gas into stars and the timescale of the collision. We make a series of analytic arguments with which to estimate these lifetimes. Our simple analytic arguments suggest that for collisions between clouds larger than R~10 pc the lifetime of the broad bridge is more likely to be determined by the lifetime of the collision rather than the radiative or wind feedback disruption timescale. However for smaller clouds feedback becomes much more effective. This is because the radiative feedback timescale scales with the ionising flux Nly as R^{7/4}Nly^{-1/4} so a reduction in cloud size requires a relatively large decrease in ionising photons to maintain a given timescale. We find that our analytic arguments are consistent with new synthetic observations of numerical simulations of cloud-cloud collisions (including star formation and radiative feedback). We also argue that if the number of observable broad bridges remains ~ constant, then the disruption timescale must be roughly equivalent to the collision rate. If this is the case our analytic arguments also provide collision rate estimates, which we find are readily consistent with previous theoretical models at the scales they consider (clouds larger than about 10 pc) but are much higher for smaller clouds.

Triggered O Star Formation in M20 via Cloud–Cloud Collision: Comparisons between High-resolution CO Observations and Simulations

Understanding high-mass star formation is one of the top-priority issues in astrophysics. Recent observational studies have revealed that cloud–cloud collisions may play a role in high-mass star formation in several places in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Trifid Nebula M20 is a well-known Galactic H ii region ionized by a single O7.5 star. In 2011, based on the CO observations with NANTEN2, we reported that the O star was formed by the collision between two molecular clouds ~0.3 Myr ago. Those observations identified two molecular clouds toward M20, traveling at a relative velocity of . This velocity separation implies that the clouds cannot be gravitationally bound to M20, but since the clouds show signs of heating by the stars there they must be spatially coincident with it. A collision is therefore highly possible. In this paper we present the new CO J = 1–0 and J = 3–2 observations of the colliding clouds in M20 performed with the Mopra and ASTE telescopes. The high-resolution observations revealed that the two molecular clouds have peculiar spatial and velocity structures, i.e., a spatially complementary distribution between the two clouds and a bridge feature that connects the two clouds in velocity space. Based on a new comparison with numerical models, we find that this complementary distribution is an expected outcome of cloud–cloud collisions, and that the bridge feature can be interpreted as the turbulent gas excited at the interface of the collision. Our results reinforce the cloud–cloud collision scenario in M20.

Does feedback help or hinder star formation? The effect of photoionisation on star formation in Giant Molecular Clouds

We investigated the effect of photoionising feedback inside turbulent star-forming clouds, comparing the resultant star formation in both idealised profiles and more realistic cloud structures drawn from a global galaxy simulation. We performed a series of numerical simulations which compared the effect of star formation alone, photoionisation and photoionisation plus supernovae feedback. In the idealised cloud, photoionisation suppresses gas fragmentation at early times, resulting in the formation of more massive stars and an increase in the star formation efficiency. At later times, the dispersal of the dense gas causes the radiative feedback effect to switch from positive to negative as the star formation efficiency drops. In the cloud extracted from the global simulation, the initial cloud is heavily fragmented prior to the stellar feedback beginning and is largely structurally unaffected by the late injection of radiation energy. The result is a suppression of the star formation. We conclude that the efficiency of feedback is heavily dependent on the gas structure, with negative feedback dominating when the density is high.

Formation of massive, dense cores by cloud–cloud collisions

We performed sub-parsec (

The effect of photoionizing feedback on star formation in isolated and colliding clouds

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From cloud crash to star birth: star formation in cloud collisions

0.014 pc) scale simulations of cloud-cloud collisions of two idealized turbulent molecular clouds (MCs) with different masses in the range of

A New Look at the Molecular Gas in M42 and M43: Possible Evidence for Cloud–Cloud Collision that Triggered Formation of the OB Stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster

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CO observations of the molecular gas in the galactic HII region Sh2-48; Evidence for cloud-cloud collision as a trigger of high-mass star formation.

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Large-scale CO J = 1–0 observations of the giant molecular cloud associated with the infrared ring N35 with the Nobeyama 45 m telescope

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