SF-07-0012

Observational signatures of forming young massive clusters: continuum emission

Takashi Hosokawa, Mutsuko Inoguchi, Hajime Fukushima, Kei Tanaka, Hidenobu Yajima, Shin Mineshige

Young massive clusters (YMCs) are the most massive star clusters forming in nearby galaxies and are thought to be a young analogue to the globular clusters. We study possible observational signatures of their formation stage, particularly when the mass of a cluster is increasing via accretion from a natal molecular cloud. To this end, we study the broad-band continuum emission from ionized gas and dust near YMCs, whose formation is followed by recent radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. We perform post-process radiative transfer calculations using simulation snapshots and find characteristic spectral features at radio and far-infrared wavelengths. We show that a striking feature is long-lasting, strong free-free emission from a ~10pc-scale HII region. Because of its large emission measure, there is a turnover feature below ~10GHz, a signature of the free-free absorption, often found in Galactic ultra-compact HII regions. These features come from the peculiar YMC formation process, where the cluster's gravity effectively traps photoionized gas for a long duration and enables continuous star formation within the cluster. Such large and dense HII regions show distinct distribution on the density-size diagram, apart from the standard sequence of Galactic HII regions. This is consistent with the observational trend inferred for extragalactic HII regions associated with YMCs.