Stellar evolution before the ZAMS.pdfVIP

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 5 0 8 5 4 5 v 1 2 5 A u g 2 0 0 5 Massive Star Birth: A Crossroads of Astrophysics Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 227, 2005 R. Cesaroni, E. Churchwell, M. Felli M. Walmsley, eds. c? 2005 International Astronomical Union DOI: 00.0000/X000000000000000X Stellar evolution before the ZAMS Francesco Palla1 1INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125, Firenze, Italy email: palla@arcetri.astro.it Abstract. Young stars on their way to the ZAMS evolve in significantly different ways depending on their mass. While the theoretical and observational properties of low- and intermediate-mass stars are rather well understood and/or empirically tested, the situation for massive stars ( ～ 10– 15 M⊙) is, to say the least, still elusive. On theoretical grounds, the PMS evolution of these objects should be extremely short, or nonexistent at all. Observationally, despite a great deal of effort, the simple (or bold) predictions of simplified models of massive star formation/evolution have proved more difficult to be checked. After a brief review of the theoretical expectations, I will highlight some critical test on young stars of various masses. Keywords. stars: formation - Hertzsprung-Russell diagram - stars: pre–main-sequence 1. Introduction After a brief, intense, and optically obscured protostellar phase, newly formed stars emerge from their natal environments as relatively bright, distended objects undergo- ing gravitational contraction towards the main sequence. While residual accretion from circumstellar disks is observed to take place in young pre–main-sequence (PMS) stars, the magnitude of the accretion flow appears to be much lower (typically, M?PMS～ 10 ?7 M⊙ yr ?1) than the protostellar one (typically, M?proto ～ 10 ?5 M⊙ yr ?1). Therefore, PMS derive most of their energy from contraction rather than accretion, and evolve on a charac- teristic Kelvin-Helmoltz time scale (tKH). The major imprint left from the protostell