Role of stellar winds in the early evolution of massive star clusters

Determine the role of fast, line-driven stellar winds in the early evolution of massive star clusters, establishing how these winds interact with the surrounding interstellar medium during the embedded phase and contribute to the development of diffuse hot gas and feedback signatures.

Background

The paper investigates the highly embedded N79 star-forming complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud to study wind-driven feedback at the onset of massive star cluster formation. The authors focus on H72.97−69.39, a very young (<0.5 Myr) potential proto-super-star cluster, using new Chandra observations to detect diffuse, hard X-ray emission attributed to hot gas produced by stellar winds.

By comparing observed X-ray properties with wind bubble models, the paper aims to shed light on how stellar wind energy is deposited and potentially lost during early cluster assembly, but explicitly acknowledges that the broader role of winds in the earliest cluster stages remains unresolved.

References

One open issue is the role of winds in the early evolution of MSCs, and the study of young, embedded sources can provide important insights.

— Detection of Diffuse Hot Gas Around the Young, Potential Superstar Cluster H72.97-69.39  (2402.14056 - Webb et al., 2024) in Section 1, Introduction

While the work presented here relies on a single set of parameters for each progenitor mass, we acknowledge that some variance is expected and observed and will naturally have an impact on the bubble properties. At any given stellar mass, the mass-loss rate can vary by at least an order of magnitude \citep{seo+2018,puls+2008}, while the ambient density can span four orders of magnitude, from 0.1 to 1000 H/cm$3$ \citep[from warm ionised to cold diffuse molecular gas; see][]{ferriere2001}. Although wind-blown bubble properties have a rather weak dependence on these parameters \citep{weaver+1977}, which somewhat mitigates the problem, the large range of possible ambient densities at least will translate into very different bubble sizes and shell masses. We defer the investigation of such effects to future work, and caution for the time being that the results presented here are rather representative of systems evolving in the warm phase of the ISM.

— The impact of circumstellar wind-blown bubbles on the dynamics of pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants  (2608.24170 - Bourguinat et al., 25 Aug 2026) in Section 2.1, subsection “WBB”