Quantifying the decline in CO(2-1) intensity around PHANGS-HST star clusters: Constraints on molecular gas dispersal, stellar feedback, and cluster formation efficiency
We combine the largest survey of star clusters in nearby galaxies to-date, PHANGS-HST, with maps of molecular gas maps from PHANGS-ALMA to constrain the efficiency of cluster formation and the typical timescales over which clusters become dis-associated from their natal molecular gas. We analyse 29,233 clusters in 36 galaxies using CO maps at 150 pc resolution. For each star cluster with stellar mass $\geq 10^{3.5}$ M$_\odot$, we measure the radial profiles of CO(2-1) integrated intensity and obtain local background-subtracted CO intensity, $I_{\rm CO}^{\rm bkgsub}$, at cluster centre. We group the clusters by age and mass to quantify the dependence of $I_{\rm CO}^{\rm bkgsub}$ and corresponding molecular gas mass, $M_{\rm mol}$, on these cluster properties. To account for the cluster mass ($M_{\rm SC}$) dependence, we also calculate the normalised mass ratio of $(M_{\rm mol}/M_{\rm SC})$. We find that CO intensity varies systematically with cluster age and mass. Clusters that are spatially associated with H$α$ emission exhibit the highest $I_{\rm CO}^{\rm bkgsub}$ of 7.4 K km s$^{-1}$, corresponding to a $M_{\rm mol}/M_{\rm SC}$ ratio of 82 and implying a cluster formation efficiency ($ε_{\rm obs}$) of $\sim 1.2\%$. Young clusters without associated H$α$ emission show lower and age-dependent $I_{\rm CO}^{\rm bkgsub}$ and $M_{\rm mol}/M_{\rm SC}$, decreasing from 1.3 K km s$^{-1}$ and 15 for clusters with age 1-3 Myr, to a level $\approx$ 0 for clusters older than 9--10 Myr. Clusters older than 10 Myr show no statistical excess of CO intensity. We use the clusters with H$α$ association as initial conditions to model the impact of cluster drift and demonstrate that this is unlikely to drive the observed cluster-gas spatial disassociation on short timescales of 4-6 Myr. Instead, early stellar feedback seems likely to be the main driver.