Massive Star Cluster Formation and Destruction in Luminous Infrared Galaxies in GOALS

Creators: Linden, S. T.; Evans, A. S.; Rich, J.; Larson, K. L.; Armus, L.; Díaz-Santos, T.; Privon, G. C.; Howell, J.; Inami, H.; Kim, D.-C.; Chien, L.-H.; Vavilkin, T.; Mazzarella, J. M.; Modica, F.; Surace, J. A.; Manning, S.; Abdullah, A.; Blake, A.; Yarber, A.; Lamberts, T.

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Abstract

We present the results of a Hubble Space Telescope ACS/HRC FUV, ACS/WFC optical study into the cluster populations of a sample of 22 Luminous Infrared Galaxies in the Great Observatories All-Sky LIRG Survey. Through integrated broadband photometry, we have derived ages and masses for a total of 484 star clusters contained within these systems. This allows us to examine the properties of star clusters found in the extreme environments of LIRGs relative to lower luminosity star-forming galaxies in the local universe. We find that by adopting a Bruzual & Charlot simple stellar population model and Salpeter initial mass function, the age distribution of the clusters declines as dN/dτ = τ^(-0.9+/-0.3), consistent with the age distribution derived for the Antennae Galaxies, and interpreted as evidence for rapid cluster disruption occurring in the strong tidal fields of merging galaxies. The large number of 10^6 M_☉ young clusters identified in the sample also suggests that LIRGs are capable of producing more high-mass clusters than what is observed to date in any lower luminosity star-forming galaxy in the local universe. The observed cluster mass distribution of dN/dM = M^(-1.95+/-0.11) is consistent with the canonical −2 power law used to describe the underlying initial cluster mass function (ICMF) for a wide range of galactic environments. We interpret this as evidence against mass-dependent cluster disruption, which would flatten the observed CMF relative to the underlying ICMF distribution.

Additional Information

© 2017 American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 October 17. Accepted 2017 May 8. Published 2017 July 6. The authors thank B. Whitmore, R. Chandar, A. Mulia, and G. Soutchkova for useful discussions and assistance. The authors also thank the referee for detailed comments and suggestions, which have improved the manuscript. S.T.L. was supported by the NASA VSGC Graduate Fellowship. A.S.E., D.C.K., S. M., A. A., A. B., A. Y., and T. L. were supported by NSF grant AST 1109475 and by NASA through grants HST-GO10592.01-A, HST-GO11196.01-A, and HST-GO13364 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. G.C.P. was supported by a FONDECYT Postdoctoral Fellowship (No. 3150361). A.S.E. was also supported by the Taiwan, R.O.C. Ministry of Science and Technology grant MoST 102-2119-M-001-MY3. T.D.-S. acknowledges support from ALMA-CONICYT project 31130005 and FONDECYT regular project 1151239. Portions of this work were performed at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-1066293. This work was partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation. Finally, This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, as well as the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities Inc.

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