3-D Hydrodynamical Simulations of radiative cooling SNRs-clouds interactions: an application to Starburst Environments

Most galaxies present supernova shock fronts interacting with a cloudy interstellar medium. Particularly, in this work we are interested to study the by-products of SNR-clouds in a starburst (SB) system. Due to the high SN rate in this environment, a cloud may be shocked more than once by SNRs. These interactions can have an important role in the recycling of matter from the clouds to the ISM and vice-versa. Their study is also relevant to understand the evolution of the ISM density and the structure of the clouds embedded in it. In the present work, we have focused our attention on the global effects of the interactions between clouds and SN shock waves in the ISM of SB environments, and performed 3-D radiative cooling hydrodynamical simulations with the adaptive YGUAZU grid code. We have also considered the effects of the photo-evaporation due to the presence of a high number of UV photons from hot stars and supernovae (SNe). The results have shown that, in the presence of radiative cooling, instead of an efficient gas mixing with the diffuse ISM, the interactions cause the fragmentation of the clouds into smaller ones. The results have also revealed that the SNR-clouds interactions are less efficient at producing substantial mass loss from the clouds to the diffuse ISM than mechanisms such as the photo-evaporation caused by the UV flux from the hot stars. This result has important consequences on the global evolution of the SB environment and on the formation of associated superwinds, and may have also relevant applications to the ISM of normal galaxies