A gravitational and dynamical model of star formation in Orion

The Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) is the most massive region of active star formation within a kpc of the Sun. Using Gaia EDR3 parallaxes and proper motions, we examine the bulk motions of stars radially and tangentially relative to the cluster center. We find an age gradient with distance to the stars in the ONC, from 385 pc for the oldest stars, to 395 pc for the younger stars, indicating that the star forming front is propagating into the cloud. We find an organized signature of rotation of the central cluster, but it is present only in stars younger than 2 Myr. We also observe a net infall of young stars into the center of the ONC’s deep gravitational potential well. The infalling sources lie preferentially along the filament, on the other hand, outflowing sources are distributed spherically around the cluster, and they have larger velocity dispersion. We further propose a solution to a longstanding question of why the ONC shows a weak signature of expansion even though the cluster is likely bound: much of this expansion is likely driven by unstable N-body interactions among stars, resulting in low-velocity ejections. Finally we observe a significant infall of stars in various low-mass star-forming regions towards the Orion Complex at distances as far away as 200 pc, presumably due to a strong gravitational potential of Orion. Though analyzing signatures imprinted on stellar dynamics across different spatial scales, these observation shed new light on the signatures of formation and evolution of young clusters.