SF-07-0011

The Physical Environment of Young Star Clusters

Harmeen Kaur, Saurabh Sharma, Lokesh K Dewangan, Alok Durgapal

With the aim of investigating the stellar IMF, as well as the physical processes governing the interaction and feedback effect of massive stars, we have studied the promising young cluster NGC 6910 using deep optical photometric observations along with multiwavelenth archival data sets. We have found that the mass function slope in the cluster region (Γ = ?0.74 ± 0.15) is shallow than the Salpeter value (i.e., ?1.35), which indicates the presence of an excess number of massive stars in the cluster region. This cluster is showing the signature of mass segregation and a comparison between the cluster age (i.e., ~4.5 Myr) and its dynamical relaxation time (i.e., ~6.5 Myr) suggests that the cluster is not relaxed yet, and the observed mass segregation seen in this cluster may be the imprint of the star formation process. The distribution of warm dust emission is investigated towards the central region of the cluster, signifies the impact of massive stars within the cluster region. The cluster is surrounded by PDRs along with the presence of radio peaks (ionized clumps) and cold gas. These radio continuum peaks are powered by massive B-type stars and have age range ~0.07?0.12 Myr. The age gradient between the central massive star (4.5 Myr) and the ionized clumps (~ 0.07 ? 0.12 Myr) along with other signatures
suggests that the feedback effects from the central massive stars are triggering the formation of the next generation of stars.