Star Cluster Formation and Feedback

Understand

Stars do not generally form in isolation.

• Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds.
• Feedback from clustered stars is almost certainly responsible for a number of otherwise puzzling facts about star formation: that it is an inefficient process that proceeds slowly when averaged over galactic scales; that most stars disperse from their birth sites and dissolve into the galactic field over timescales $\ll 1$ Gyr; and that newborn stars follow an initial mass function (IMF) with a distinct peak in the range $0.1 - 1$ $M_\odot$, rather than an IMF dominated by brown dwarfs.
• In this review we summarize current observational constraints and theoretical models for the complex interplay between clustered star formation and feedback.