Relative importance and efficiencies of stellar feedback mechanisms

Determine the relative importance and efficiencies of stellar winds, ionizing radiation, and supernova explosions in regulating star formation and dispersing gas in collapsing giant molecular clouds across a broad range of cloud masses, radii, and metallicities.

Background

The paper investigates how mechanical feedback from young stars (winds and supernovae) interacts with collapsing molecular clouds over a wide parameter space, emphasizing the role of metallicity. Despite recent multi-physics simulations and observational advances, disentangling the relative impact of different feedback channels remains challenging because they act simultaneously and depend sensitively on environment.

The authors focus here on winds and supernovae, deferring radiation feedback to future work. They explicitly note that many questions remain open regarding which mechanisms dominate under which conditions, motivating their controlled 1D modeling as a step toward clarifying the division of roles among feedback processes.

References

Nevertheless, and despite its importance, there are currently still many open questions regarding the relative importance and efficiencies of the different feedback mechanisms.

— The Star Formation Factory revisited I. The impact of metallicity on collapsing star-forming clouds  (2604.00126 - Jiménez et al., 31 Mar 2026) in Introduction (Section 1)

The main and secondary EON bubbles might have been produced by two consecutive feedback events.

— The Neutral Atomic Hydrogen in the solar neighborhood (NeAtHood) project I. Ghost in the shell: Neutral atomic hydrogen in the extended Orion nebula  (2609.02658 - Soler et al., 2 Sep 2026) in Section 3.3, “EON shell substructure”