English

Masses, Star-Formation Efficiencies, and Dynamical Evolution of 18,000 HII Regions

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-09-30 v1

Abstract

We present measurements of the masses associated with 18,000\sim18,000 HII regions across 19 nearby star-forming galaxies by combining data from JWST, HST, MUSE, ALMA, VLA, and MeerKAT from the multi-wavelength PHANGS survey. We report 10 pc-scale measurements of the mass of young stars, ionized gas, and older disk stars coincident with each HII region, as well as the initial and current mass of molecular gas, atomic gas, and swept-up shell material, estimated from lower resolution data. We find that the mass of older stars dominates over young stars at 10pc\gtrsim10\rm\,pc scales, and ionized gas exceeds the stellar mass in most optically bright HII regions. Combining our mass measurements for a statistically large sample of HII regions, we derive 10 pc scale star-formation efficiencies 617%\approx6{-}17\% for individual HII regions. Comparing each region's self-gravity with the ambient ISM pressure and total pressure from pre-supernova stellar feedback, we show that most optically bright HII regions are over-pressured relative to their own self-gravity and the ambient ISM pressure, and that they are hence likely expanding into their surroundings. Larger HII regions in galaxy centers approach dynamical equilibrium. The self-gravity of regions is expected to dominate over pre-supernova stellar feedback pressure at 130pc\gtrsim130\rm\,pc and 60pc60\rm\,pc scales in galaxy disks and centers, respectively, but is always sub-dominant to the ambient ISM pressure on HII region scales. Our measurements have direct implications for the dynamical evolution of star-forming regions and the efficiency of stellar feedback in ionizing and clearing cold gas.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.22789,
  title  = {Masses, Star-Formation Efficiencies, and Dynamical Evolution of 18,000 HII Regions},
  author = {Debosmita Pathak and Adam K. Leroy and Ashley. T. Barnes and Todd A. Thompson and Laura A. Lopez and Karin M. Sandstrom and Jiayi Sun and Simon C. O. Glover and Ralf S. Klessen and Eric W. Koch and Kirsten L. Larson and Janice Lee and Sharon Meidt and Patricia Sanchez-Blazquez and Eva Schinnerer and Zein Bazzi and Francesco Belfiore and Médéric Boquien and Ryan Chown and Dario Colombo and Enrico Congiu and Oleg V. Egorov and Cosima Eibensteiner and Sushma Kurapati and Miguel Querejeta and Daniel A. Dale and Timo Kravtsov and Mansi Padave and D. J. Pisano and Erik Rosolowsky and Sumit K. Sarbadhicary and Thomas G. Williams and Remy Indebetouw and Hsi-An Pan and Leonardo Úbeda and Amirnezam Amiri and Frank Bigiel and Guillermo A. Blanc and Kathryn Grasha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.22789},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in ApJL; main text: 13 pages, 4 figures, 1 table