Two waves of massive stars running away from the young cluster R136

Abstract

Massive stars are predominantly born in stellar associations or clusters. Their radiation fields, stellar winds, and supernovae strongly impact their local environment. In the first few million years of a cluster's life, massive stars are dynamically ejected running away from the cluster at high speed. However, the production rate of dynamically ejected runaways is poorly constrained. Here we report on a sample of 55 massive runaway stars ejected from the young cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Astrometric analysis with Gaia reveals two channels of dynamically ejected runaways. The first channel ejects massive stars in all directions and is consistent with dynamical interactions during and after the birth of R136. The second channel launches stars in a preferred direction and may be related to a cluster interaction. We find that 23-33% of the most luminous stars initially born in R136 are runaways. Model predictions have significantly underestimated the dynamical escape fraction of massive stars. Consequently, their role in shaping and heating the interstellar and galactic medium, along with their role in driving galactic outflows, is far more important than previously thought.

Published in Nature on 2024 October 09. 39 pages, 17 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• An observational study of rotation and binarity of Galactic O-type runaway stars
• Binarity at LOw Metallicity (BLOeM): Bayesian inference of natal kicks from inert black hole binaries
• Evolutionary models for the Very Massive Stars in the R136 cluster of 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud
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