Radiation feedback in dusty clouds

Shohei Ishiki, Takashi Okamoto

Published 2016-05-09Version 1

We have investigated the impact of photoionization and radiation pressure on a dusty star-forming cloud by one-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic simulations, which include absorption and re-emission of photons by dust. We find that even in a moderately dusty cloud with the infrared optical depth of 0.15, radiation pressure has strong impact on driving an outflow, while the effect of radiation pressure is negligible in a dustless cloud. The radiation pressure on dust creates an HII region whose density is much lower than that in a dustless cloud where an outflow is driven by thermal pressure of ionized gas. Due to the radiation pressure, a shocked shell expands with high velocity, > 100 km s^-1. Absorption of re-emitted photons by dust plays a significant role in driving an outflow when the infrared optical depth becomes unity and it increases the importance of radiation pressure. The column density of clouds decreases with very short timescale owing to the shell expansion. Because of the decline of the infrared optical depth, the radiation pressure becomes less important as the shell expands. This makes it difficult to incorporate the effects of radiation feedback as subgrid physics in simulations which do not solve radiative transfer directly.