THE VMC SURVEY XXII. HIERARCHICAL STAR FORMATION IN THE 30 DORADUS-N158-N159-N160 STAR-FORMING COMPLEX

N. SUN, R. DE GRIJS, S. SUBRAMANIAN, M.R. CIONI, S. RUBELE, K. BEKKI, V.D. IVANOV, A.E. PIATTI, V. RIPEPI

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2017 vol. 835 p. 1 - 10

0004-637X

We study the hierarchical star formation in a ∼1.5 deg 2 area covering the 30 Doradus-N158-N159-N160 star-forming complex with the VISTA Survey of the Magellanic Clouds. Based on the youngupper main-sequence stars, we find that the surface densities cover a wide range of values, fromlog(Σ·pc 2 )−2.0 to log(Σ·pc 2 )0.0. Their distributions are highly non-uniform, showing groupsthat frequently have sub-groups inside. The sizes of the stellar groups do not exhibit characteristic val-ues, and range continuously from several parsecs to more than 100 pc; the cumulative size distributioncan be well described by a single power law , with the power-law index indicating a projectedfractal dimension D 2 = 1.6 ± 0.3. We suggest that the phenomena revealed here supporta scenario of hierarchical star formation. Comparisons with other star-forming regionsand galaxies are also discussed.