Speaker: Shyam Harimohna Menon (Australian National University)
The Nature of Stellar Feedback and Star Formation in Dusty Starburst Environments
The formation of stars in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and their feedback control the formation and evolution of galaxies in their cosmological environments. At the peak of cosmic noon (z~2), star formation occurred predominantly in clumpy, dusty, starburst galaxies, which form extremely dense and compact GMCs. The nature of star formation and feedback in this regime is largely unconstrained, primarily due to the numerical challenges of capturing the essential radiative feedback mechanisms in these highly optically-thick environments. In this talk I will introduce VETTAM, a numerical radiation hydrodynamics scheme we developed that alleviates these limitations, and present numerical simulations that quantifies multiple traits of GMC-scale star formation in this regime: such as the star formation efficiency, feedback mechanisms and their momentum contributions to the ISM, and the dynamical properties of the super-star clusters which form in these GMCs. I will conclude by touching upon future work planned, and the broader contributions they will make to the galaxy formation/evolution community.
