Hierarchical stellar structures in the Local Group dwarf galaxy NGC 6822

We present a comprehensive study of the star cluster population and the hierarchical structure in the clustering of blue stars with ages lsim500 Myr in the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. Our observational material comprises the most complete optical stellar catalog of the galaxy from imaging with the Suprime-Cam at the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope. We identify 47 distinct star clusters with the application of the nearest-neighbor density method to this catalog for a detection threshold of 3σ above the average stellar density. The size distribution of the detected clusters can be very well approximated by a Gaussian with a peak at ~68 pc. The total stellar masses of the clusters are estimated by extrapolating the cumulative observed stellar mass function of all clusters to be in the range 103-104 M sun. Their number distribution is fitted very well by a power law with index α ~ 1.5 ± 0.7, which is consistent with the cluster mass functions of other Local Group galaxies and the cluster initial mass function. In addition to the detected star clusters of the galaxy, the application of the nearest-neighbor density method for various density thresholds, other than 3σ, enabled the identification of stellar concentrations in various lengthscales. The stellar density maps constructed with this technique provide a direct proof of hierarchically structured stellar concentrations in NGC 6822, in the sense that smaller dense stellar concentrations are located inside larger and looser ones. We illustrate this hierarchy by the so-called dendrogram, or structure tree of the detected stellar structures, which demonstrates that most of the detected structures split up into several substructures over at least three levels. We quantify the hierarchy of these structures with the use of the minimum spanning tree method. We find that structures detected at 1, 2, and 3σ density thresholds are hierarchically constructed with a fractal dimension of D ≈ 1.8. Some of the larger stellar concentrations, particularly in the northern part of the central star-forming portion of the galaxy, coincide with IR-bright complexes previously identified with Spitzer and associated with high column density neutral gas, indicating structures that currently form stars. The morphological hierarchy in stellar clustering, which we observe in NGC 6822, resembles that of the turbulent interstellar matter, suggesting that turbulence on pc and kpc scales has been probably the major agent that regulated clustered star formation in NGC 6822