Supernova Remnants and Star Formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud
K. M. Desai (1), Y.-H. Chu (1), R. A. Gruendl (1), W. Dluger (1), M. Katz (1), T. Wong (1), C.-H. R. Chen (2), L. W. Looney (1), A. Hughes (3,4), E. Muller (5), J. Ott (6), J. L. Pineda (7)
(1) Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
(2) Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
(3) Centre for Supercomputing and Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
(4) CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility, Australia
(5) Department of Physics and Astrophysics, Nagoya University, Japan
(6) National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA
(7) NASA/JPL, USA
It has often been suggested that supernova remnants (SNRs) can trigger star formation. To investigate the relationship between SNRs and star formation, we have examined the known sample of 45 SNRs in the Large Magellanic Cloud to search for associated young stellar objects (YSOs) and molecular clouds. We find seven SNRs associated with both YSOs and molecular clouds, three SNRs associated with YSOs but not molecular clouds, and eight SNRs near molecular clouds but not associated with YSOs. Among the 10 SNRs associated with YSOs, the association between the YSOs and SNRs can be either rejected or cannot be convincingly established for eight cases. Only two SNRs have YSOs closely aligned along their rims; however, the time elapsed since the SNR began to interact with the YSOs' natal clouds is much shorter than the contraction timescales of the YSOs, and thus we do not see any evidence of SNR-triggered star formation in the LMC. The 15 SNRs that are near molecular clouds
may trigger star formation in the future when the SNR shocks have slowed down to $<$45 km~s$^{-1}$. We discuss how SNRs can alter the physical properties and abundances of YSOs.
Reference: The Astronomical Journal
Status: Manuscript has been accepted
Weblink: http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.3344
Comments:
Email: kdesai7@illinois.edu