Star Formation, Stellar Feedback, and the Ecology of Galaxies

Star Formation, Stellar Feedback, and the Ecology of Galaxies

Bubbles of Destruction in M33: Massive Stars as they Live and Die

Stellar feedback regulates the formation of stars and the evolution of star-forming galaxies. Massive stars are the primary drivers of early stellar feedback and progenitors of core-collapse supernova (SN) events. This feedback therefore plays a key role in regulating the impact of SN feedback by altering the conditions of the interstellar medium prior to these events. Here, we present a study of stellar feedback in the nearby galaxy M33, investigating its impact as a function of local galactic environment using integral field unit (IFU) spectroscopy. With increasingly large field of view and wavelength coverage, IFUs have been used widely over the last decade in optical studies of spatially-resolved star forming regions in nearby galaxies, enabling us to simultaneously study both the stellar and gaseous components of these regions. In this case we use the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope (CFHT) SITELLE instrument data set covering this galaxy as part of the SIGNALS project, with a field of view of approximately 970 square arcmin (70 square kpc). We quantify two pre-supernova stellar feedback mechanisms, the pressure of the ionised gas and the direct radiation pressure. We identify emission line regions from the general population using dendrograms via the Python packages astrodendro and, an additional spectral clustering algorithm, SCIMES. Combining several emission line ratio diagnostics and kinematical information, we distinguish between HII regions, planetary nebulae, and supernova remnants, and compute their degree of ionisation, gas-phase oxygen abundances via empirical strong line methods, and ultimately feedback-related pressure terms. We recover the negative metallicity gradient of this galaxy and measure an increasing degree of ionisation as a function of galactocentric radius. We observe weakly decreasing pressure of the ionised gas and increasing direct radiation pressure values as a function of galactocentric radius, respectively.