Star Formation, Stellar Feedback, and the Ecology of Galaxies

Star Formation, Stellar Feedback, and the Ecology of Galaxies

Joint ALMA-JWST Study of Star Clusters at Their Infant Stages

Theoretical studies show that the clustering nature of star formation is a major booster to the feedback effect on ISM, especially in starburst systems. Hence, it is important to understand the properties of young massive star clusters (YMCs) that provide these feedbacks. In this study, we focus on a joint ALMA-JWST study to probe YMCs in a starburst system, NGC 3256. We use ALMA 100 GHz and 345 GHz continuum to capture the free-free and dust emission of embedded YMCs. With ALMA, we recover ~20 sources with stellar mass greater than 10^6 solarmass, half of which with dust emission detection that suggests the existence of the leftover gas. These YMCs generally lie along the inner gas ring and outer tidal streams. We further make spatial comparison with the existing JWST catalog and surprisingly, see almost no spatial overlaps. This suggests that our ALMA radio sources are still deeply embedded that cannot be probed by infrared observations, and also probably at much younger evolutionary stages. Leveraging with the JWST age estimates, we infer a feedback timescale of 1-2 Myr, which is shorter than 4-6 Myr estimated for normal spiral galaxies. The shorter timescale implies a stronger feedback, possibly due to more massive clusters in starburst systems.