Propagation of star formation at sub-kiloparsec scales

Abstract

ABSTRACT We study the propagation of star formation based on the investigation of the separation of young star clusters from H ii regions nearest to them. The relation between the separation and U − B colour index (or age) of a star cluster was found. The average age of star clusters increases with the separation as the 1.0–1.2 power in the separation range from 40 to 200 pc and as the 0.4–0.9 power in the range of 100–500 pc in the galaxies with symmetric morphology. The galaxies with distorted asymmetric disc structure show more complex and steeper (power >1.2 at separations from 40 to 500 pc) dependence between the age and the separation. Our results confirm the findings of previous studies on the dominant role of turbulence in propagation of the star formation process on spatial scales up to 500 pc and on time-scales up to 300 Myr. On a smaller scale (≤100 pc), other physical processes, such as stellar winds and supernova explosions, play an important role along with turbulence. On the scale of stellar associations (100–200 pc and smaller), the velocity of star formation propagation is almost constant and it has a typical value of a few km s−1.