| Abstract |
Context. The final stages of molecular cloud evolution involve cloud disruption due to feedback by massive stars, with recent literature suggesting the importance of early (i.e., pre-supernova) feedback mechanisms. Aims. We aim to determine whether feedback from massive stars in H II regions has a measurable impact on the physical properties of molecular clouds at a characteristic scale of ~ 100 pc, and whether the imprint of feedback on the molecular gas depends on the local galactic environment. Methods. We identified giant molecular clouds (GMCs) associated with H II regions for a sample of 19 nearby galaxies from catalogs of GMCs and H II regions released by the PHANGS-ALMA and PHANGS-MUSE surveys, using the overlap of the CO and H α emission as the key criterion for physical association. We compared the distributions of GMC and H II region properties for paired and non-paired objects. We investigated correlations between GMC and H II region properties among galaxies and across different galactic environments to determine whether GMCs that are associated with H II regions have significantly distinct physical properties compared to the parent GMC population. Results. We identify trends between the H α luminosity of an H II region and the CO peak brightness and molecular mass of GMCs that we tentatively attribute to a direct physical connection between the matched objects, and which arise independently of the underlying environmental variations of GMC and H II region properties within galaxies. The study of the full sample nevertheless hides a large galaxy-to-galaxy variability. Conclusions. At the ~100 pc scales accessed by the PHANGS-ALMA and PHANGS-MUSE data, pre-supernova feedback mechanisms in H II regions have a subtle but measurable impact on the properties of the surrounding molecular gas, as inferred from CO observations. |
| Authors |
Antoine Zakardjian  , J. Pety , Cinthya N. Herrera , A. Hughes , Elias Oakes , Kathryn Kreckel , Christopher M. Faesi , Simon C. O. Glover , Brent Groves , Ralf S. Klessen , Sharon E. Meidt , Ashley T. Barnes , Francesco Belfiore , Ivana Bešlić , Frank Bigiel , Guillermo A. Blanc , Mélanie Chevance , Daniel A. Dale  , Jakob S. den Brok , Cosima Eibensteiner , Éric Emsellem , Axel García-Rodríguez , Kathryn Grasha , Eric W. Koch , Adam K. Leroy , Daizhong Liu , Rebecca Mc Elroy , Lukáš Neumann , Hsi-An Pan , Miguel Querejeta , Alessandro Razza , Erik Rosolowsky , Toshiki Saito , Francesco Santoro , E. Schinnerer , Jiayi Sun , A. Usero , Elizabeth J. Watkins , Thomas G. Williams
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