Spitzer Observations of Dust Emission from HII Regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

Massive stars can alter physical conditions and properties of their ambient interstellar dust grains via radiative heating and shocks. The HII regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) offer ideal sites to study the stellar energy feedback effects on dust because stars can be resolved, and the galaxy's nearly face-on orientation allows us to unambiguously associate HII regions with their ionizing massive stars. The Spitzer Space Telescope survey of the LMC provides multi-wavelength (3.6 to 160 $\mu$m) photometric data of all HII regions. To investigate the evolution of dust properties around massive stars, we have analyzed spatially-resolved IR dust emission from two classical HII regions (N63 and N180) and two simple superbubbles (N70 and N144) in the LMC. We produce photometric spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of numerous small subregions for each region based on its stellar distributions and nebular morphologies. We use DustEM dust emission model fits to characterize the dust properties. Color-color diagrams and model fits are compared with the radiation field (estimated from photometric and spectroscopic surveys). Strong radial variations of SEDs can be seen throughout the regions, reflecting the available radiative heating. Emission from very small grains drastically increases at locations where the radiation field is the highest, while polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) appear to be destroyed. PAH emission is the strongest in the presence of molecular clouds, provided that the radiation field is low.

Accepted to ApJ, typos fixed based on redline

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Rotational Disruption of Dust Grains by Radiative Torques in Strong Radiation Fields
• A Multiwavelength Look at Galactic Massive Star Forming Regions
• Linking Dense Gas from the Milky Way to External Galaxies
• Stellar clusterings around "Isolated" Massive YSOs in the LMC
• Spatially resolving the dust properties and submillimetre excess in M 33
• Bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves. I. Strong coupling limit
• Radiative transfer of ionizing radiation through gas and dust: stellar source case
• Dust Properties in HII Regions in M33
• Multi-frequency observations of a superbubble in the LMC: The case of LHA 120-N 70
• Toward a better understanding of the mid-infrared emission in the LMC
• Comparison of Diffuse Infrared and Far-Ultraviolet emission in the Large Magellanic Cloud: The Data