Abstract

AbstractA positive power‐law trend between the local surface densities of molecular gas, Σgas, and young stellar objects, Σstars, in molecular clouds of the solar neighbourhood has recently been identified. How it relates to the properties of embedded clusters has so far not been investigated. To that purpose, we model the development of the stellar component of molecular clumps as a function of time and local volume density. Specifically, we associate the observed volume density gradient of molecular clumps to the density‐dependent free‐fall time and we obtain the molecular clump star formation history by applying a constant star formation efficiency per free‐fall time, ϵff. The model reproduces naturally the observed (Σgas, Σstars) relation quoted above. The consequences of our model in terms of cluster survivability after residual star‐forming gas expulsion and in terms of star age distribution in young gas‐free clusters are discussed. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

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