Characterization of the extended warm molecular gas in high-mass star-forming regions

Massive stars (> 8M⊙) dominate the injection of radiative and mechanical energy (so-called stellar feedback) into the interstellar medium (ISM). These stars form in dense and massive cores of giant molecular cloud (GMCs). Stellar feedback is not limited to the close vecinity of massive stars. It...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: García Santa-María, Miriam
Tipo de recurso: tesis doctoral
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/103157
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/103157
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:524.3-52(043.2)
Estrellas masivas
Astrofísica
21 Astronomía y Astrofísica
Descripción
Sumario:Massive stars (> 8M⊙) dominate the injection of radiative and mechanical energy (so-called stellar feedback) into the interstellar medium (ISM). These stars form in dense and massive cores of giant molecular cloud (GMCs). Stellar feedback is not limited to the close vecinity of massive stars. It also controls the physical conditions of the ISM and the emitted luminosities over parsec scales (the extended cloud environment). Determining the physical conditions and heating mechanisms of this environment is critical to assess the role of stellar feedback at large scales and to understand how star formation proceeds in different environments (galaxy nuclei versus disks). Finding appropriate chemical tracers of both the cloud environment and the dense star-forming cores (nH ≳104–105 cm−3,AV > 8 mag) is of critical importance. Until very recently, mapping large areas of star-forming clouds in multiple molecular and atomic lines has been a difficult challenge. Hence, compared to the well studied cores (<0.1 pc) and protostars (thousands au), our knowledge of the physical conditions and chemical composition of the cloud environment (tens of pc) is much more restricted...