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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.08363 |
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Table of Contents:
- The ages of young star clusters are fundamental clocks to constrain the formation and evolution of pre-main-sequence stars and their protoplanetary disks and exoplanets. However, dating methods for very young clusters often disagree, casting doubts on the accuracy of the derived ages. We propose a new method to derive the kinematic age of star clusters based on the evaporation ages of their stars. The method is validated and calibrated using hundreds of clusters identified in a supernova-driven simulation of the interstellar medium forming stars for approximately 40 Myr within a 250 pc region. We demonstrate that the clusters' evaporation-age uncertainty can be as small as about 10% for clusters with a large enough number of evaporated stars and small but realistic observational errors. We have obtained evaporation ages for a pilot sample of 10 clusters, finding a good agreement with their published isochronal ages. The evaporation ages will provide important constraints for modeling the pre-main-sequence evolution of low-mass stars, as well as to investigate the star-formation and gas-evaporation history of young clusters. These ages can be more accurate than isochronal ages for very young clusters, for which observations and models are more uncertain.