Lifetimes Of Giant Molecular Clouds Research Articles

Long GMC Lifetimes: Using the Method and Data of Meidt et al. (2015) with a Correction

Abstract Meidt et al. derived short lifetimes of 20–30 Myr for giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in M51. Their novel approach utilizes a decline of the GMC population during their inter-arm passage from one spiral arm to the next. Using the inter-arm travel time t travel as a fiducial clock, they converted the decline rate to GMC lifetimes. They implicitly adopted zero as the pattern speed of the spiral arms, resulting in a very short t travel. However, it is well established that the spiral arm pattern in M51 is rotating, and that t travel should be measured with respect to the rotating spiral pattern. Here we use the same method and data of Meidt et al. and re-evaluate GMC lifetimes by accounting for the pattern speed given by Meidt et al. This correction gives a longer t travel, and consequently longer GMC lifetimes of 60–500 Myr.

Live fast, die young: GMC lifetimes in the FIRE cosmological simulations of Milky Way mass galaxies

ABSTRACT We present the first measurement of the lifetimes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in cosmological simulations at z = 0, using the Latte suite of FIRE-2 simulations of Milky Way (MW) mass galaxies. We track GMCs with total gas mass ≳105 M⊙ at high spatial (∼1 pc), mass (7100 M⊙), and temporal (1 Myr) resolution. Our simulated GMCs are consistent with the distribution of masses for massive GMCs in the MW and nearby galaxies. We find GMC lifetimes of 5–7 Myr, or 1–2 freefall times, on average, with less than 2 per cent of clouds living longer than 20 Myr. We find decreasing GMC lifetimes with increasing virial parameter, and weakly increasing GMC lifetimes with galactocentric radius, implying that environment affects the evolutionary cycle of GMCs. However, our GMC lifetimes show no systematic dependence on GMC mass or amount of star formation. These results are broadly consistent with inferences from the literature and provide an initial investigation into ultimately understanding the physical processes that govern GMC lifetimes in a cosmological setting.

A general theory for the lifetimes of giant molecular clouds under the influence of galactic dynamics

We propose a simple analytic theory for environmentally-dependent molecular cloud lifetimes, based on the large-scale (galactic) dynamics of the interstellar medium. Within this theory, the cloud lifetime is set by the time-scales for gravitational collapse, galactic shear, spiral arm interactions, epicyclic perturbations and cloud-cloud collisions. It is dependent on five observable quantities, accessible through measurements of the galactic rotation curve, the gas and stellar surface densities, and the gas and stellar velocity dispersions of the host galaxy. We determine how the relative importance of each dynamical mechanism varies throughout the space of observable galactic properties, and conclude that gravitational collapse and galactic shear play the greatest role in setting the cloud lifetime for the considered range of galaxy properties, while cloud-cloud collisions exert a much lesser influence. All five environmental mechanisms are nevertheless required to obtain a complete picture of cloud evolution. We apply our theory to the galaxies M31, M51, M83, and the Milky Way, and find a strong dependence of the cloud lifetime upon galactocentric radius in each case, with a typical cloud lifetime between 10 and 50 Myr. Our theory is ideally-suited for systematic observational tests with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre array.

Eventful evolution of giant molecular clouds in dynamically evolving spiral arms

The formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in spiral galaxies have been investigated in the traditional framework of the combined quasi-stationary density wave and galactic shock model. However, our understanding of the dynamics of spiral arms is changing from the traditional spiral model to a dynamically evolving spiral model. In this study, we investigate the structure and evolution of GMCs in a dynamically evolving spiral arm using a three-dimensional N-body/hydrodynamic simulation of a barred spiral galaxy at parsec-scale resolution. This simulation incorporated self-gravity, molecular hydrogen formation, radiative cooling, heating due to interstellar far-ultraviolet radiation, and stellar feedback by both HII regions and Type-II supernovae. In contrast to a simple expectation based on the traditional spiral model, the GMCs exhibited no systematic evolutionary sequence across the spiral arm. Our simulation showed that the GMCs behaved as highly dynamic objects with eventful lives involving collisional build-up, collision-induced star formation, and destruction via stellar feedback. The GMC lifetimes were predicted to be short, only a few tens of millions years. We also found that, at least at the resolutions and with the feedback models used in this study, most of the GMCs without HII regions were collapsing, but half of the GMCs with HII regions were expanding owing to the HII-region feedback from stars within them. Our results support the dynamic and feedback-regulated GMC evolution scenario. Although the simulated GMCs were converging rather than virial equilibrium, they followed the observed scaling relationship well. We also analysed the effects of galactic tides and external pressure on GMC evolution and suggested that GMCs cannot be regarded as isolated systems since their evolution in disc galaxies is complicated because of these environmental effects.

Giant molecular clouds in M33: are they susceptible to dynamical friction?

Most of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in M 33 are connected with spiral-like gaseous arms (filaments) with the exception of the inner 2 kpc region where the link between the arms and GMCs disappears (see Tosaki et al. 2011). We check whether it may be caused by the dynamic friction retarding the clouds. Using semi-analytical model for this galaxy we calculate the dynamics of GMCs of different masses situated at different initial galactocentric distances in the disk plane. We demonstrate that the dynamical friction may really change the orbits of GMCs in the central 2 kpc-size region. However in this case the typical lifetimes of GMCs should be close to or greater than $10^8$~yr, which is larger than the usually accepted values.

SHORT GMC LIFETIMES: AN OBSERVATIONAL ESTIMATE WITH THE PdBI ARCSECOND WHIRLPOOL SURVEY (PAWS)

We describe and execute a novel approach to observationally estimate the lifetimes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We focus on the cloud population between the two main spiral arms in M51 (the inter-arm region) where cloud destruction via shear and star formation feedback dominates over formation processes. By monitoring the change in GMC number densities and properties from one side of the inter-arm to the other, we estimate the lifetime as a fraction of the inter-arm travel time. We find that GMC lifetimes in M51's inter-arm are finite and short, 20 to 30 Myr. Such short lifetimes suggest that cloud evolution is influenced by environment, in which processes can disrupt GMCs after a few free-fall times. Over most of the region under investigation shear appears to regulate the lifetime. As the shear timescale increases with galactocentric radius, we expect cloud destruction to switch primarily to star formation feedback at larger radii. We identify a transition from shear- to feedback-dominated disruption through a change in the behavior of the GMC number density. The signature suggests that shear is more efficient at completely dispersing clouds, whereas feedback transforms the population, e.g. by fragmenting high mass clouds into lower mass pieces. Compared to the characteristic timescale for molecular hydrogen in M51, our short lifetimes suggest that gas can remain molecular while clouds disperse and reassemble. We propose that galaxy dynamics regulates the cycling of molecular material from diffuse to bound (and ultimately star-forming) objects, contributing to long observed molecular depletion times in normal disk galaxies. We also speculate that, in more extreme environments such as elliptical galaxies and concentrated galaxy centers, star formation can be suppressed when the shear timescale becomes so short that some clouds can not survive to collapse and form stars.

STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCIES AND LIFETIMES OF GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUDS IN THE MILKY WAY

We use a sample of the 13 most luminous WMAP Galactic free-free sources, responsible for 33% of the free- free emission of the Milky Way, to investigate star formation. The sample contains 40 star forming complexes; we combine this sample with giant molecular cloud (GMC) catalogs in the literature, to identify the host GMCs of 32 of the complexes. We estimate the star formation efficiency epsilon_GMC and star formation rate per free-fall time epsilon_ff. We find that epsilon_GMC ranges from 0.002 to 0.2, with an ionizing luminosity-weighted average epsilon_GMC = 0.08, compared to the Galactic average = 0.005. Turning to the star formation rate per free-fall time, we find values that range up to epsilon_ff = 1. Weighting by ionizing luminosity, we find an average of epsilon_ff = 0.16 - 0.24 depending on the estimate of the age of the system. Once again, this is much larger than the Galaxy-wide average value epsilon_ff = 0.008. We show that the lifetimes of giant molecular clouds at the mean mass found in our sample is 17 plus or minus 4 Myr, about two free-fall times. The GMCs hosting the most luminous clusters are being disrupted by those clusters. Accordingly, we interpret the range in epsilon_ff as the result of a time-variable star formation rate; the rate of star formation increases with the age of the host molecular cloud, until the stars disrupt the cloud. These results are inconsistent with the notion that the star formation rate in Milky Way GMCs is determined by the properties of supersonic turbulence

ON THE TIME VARIABILITY OF THE STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCY

A star formation efficiency per free fall time that evolves over the life time of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) may have important implications for models of supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds or for the relation between star formation rate and H2 surface density. We discuss observational data that could be interpreted as evidence of such a time variability. In particular, we investigate a recent claim based on measurements of H2 and stellar masses in individual GMCs. We show that this claim depends crucially on the assumption that H2 masses do not evolve over the life times of GMCs. We exemplify our findings with a simple toy model that uses a constant star formation efficiency and, yet, is able to explain the observational data.

How Does Star Formation Affect the Large Scale Structure of the ISM?

Nearly all the star formation in the Milky Way and nearby spiral galaxies occurs in the giant molecular clouds (GMC). Inside the GMC's the units of star formation are the high density (≥ 103cm–3) and high mass (≥ 103M⊙) clumps (Blitz, 1991). Once a GMC is “infected” by star formation many clumps form stars producing a star forming region. The formation of massive stars induces destructive processes, such as H2 dissociation, HI ionization, stellar winds and supernova explosions, thus self-limiting the lifetime of GMC to ∼ 3 107 years.

CO observations of spiral structure and the lifetime of giant molecular clouds

Observations of CO emission at ℓ=0 to 70°, |b| ≤ 1° are analyzed to give a map of the molecular cloud distribution in the galaxy as viewed from the galactic pole. From the fact that this distribution shows no obvious spiral pattern we conclude that the giant molecular clouds sampled in the CO line are situated in both arm and interarm regions and they must last more than 108 years. A similar age estimate is deduced from the large mass fraction of H2 in the interstellar medium in the interior of the galaxy. An implication of this longevity is that the great masses of these clouds may be accumulated through cloud-cloud collisions of originally smaller clouds.