Massive star formation through accretion and binary mergers

Abstract

I review the formation of massive stars in the context of a forming stellar cluster. High-mass stars form in the centre of stellar clusters and thus must be understood in the context of low-mass star formation. Furthermore, they are predominantly in binary systems making further constraints on the formation mechanism. The fragmentation of a turbulent molecular cloud produces a large number of stars with initial masses close to the Jeans mass of the cloud. These stars fall together to form small-N clusters that grow through the infall of gas and stars into the cluster's potential well. Competitive accretion in clusters produces high-mass stars in the cluster centre and a full initial mass function of lower-mass stars. Massive star formation is a process that occurs in the cores of stellar clusters and commonly produces close binary systems. Accretion also forces the cluster to contract, increasing the stellar densities to the point where stellar collisions may occur. Furthermore, accretion in clusters reproduces the high binary frequency of massive stars. Systems evolve from low-mass wide binaries to high-mass close binaries due to gas accretion. This evolution can produce very tight binaries that are expected to merge to form the most massive stars. Binary mergers require stellar densities of order 10⁶ stars pc⁻³, 100 times smaller than is required for single-star collisions.