2017MNRAS.470.2283W

We have used the AMR hydrodynamic code, MG, to perform 3D hydrodynamic simulations with self-gravity of stellar feedback in a spherical clumpy molecular cloud formed through the action of thermal instability. We simulate the interaction of the mechanical energy input from 15, 40, 60 and 120 M_☉ stars into a 100 pc diameter 16 500 M_☉ cloud with a roughly spherical morphology with randomly distributed high-density condensations. The stellar winds are introduced using appropriate non-rotating Geneva stellar evolution models. In the 15 M_☉ star case, the wind has very little effect, spreading around a few neighbouring clumps before becoming overwhelmed by the cloud collapse. In contrast, in the 40, 60 and 120 M_☉ star cases, the more powerful stellar winds create large cavities and carve channels through the cloud, breaking out into the surrounding tenuous medium during the wind phase and considerably altering the cloud structure. After 4.97, 3.97 and 3.01 Myr, respectively, the massive stars explode as supernovae (SNe). The wind-sculpted surroundings considerably affect the evolution of these SN events as they both escape the cloud along wind-carved channels and sweep up remaining clumps of cloud/wind material. The 'cloud' as a coherent structure does not survive the SN from any of these stars, but only in the 120 M_☉ case is the cold molecular material completely destabilized and returned to the unstable thermal phase. In the 40 and 60 M_☉ cases, coherent clumps of cold material are ejected from the cloud by the SN, potentially capable of further star formation.