# Gamma-ray line emission from OB associations and young open clusters

## Evolutionary Synthesis Model

Our evolutionary synthesis model is based on the multi-wavelength code described in mashesse91 ; cervino94 , enhanced by the inclusion of nucleosynthesis yields. In summary, the evolution of each individual star in a stellar population is followed using Geneva evolutionary tracks with enhanced mass-loss rates meynet94 . In our present implementation, and similar to mashesse91 ; cervino94 , stellar Lyman continuum luminosities are taken from mihalas72 ; kurucz79 . Note, however, that modern atmosphere models including the effects of line blanketing and stellar winds predict enhanced ionising fluxes with respect to these models, hence our predicted ionising luminosities should be considered as preliminary and possibly are somewhat too low<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1We currently are implementing the CoStar atmosphere models of schaerer97  in our code that consistently treat the stellar structure and atmosphere and include line blanketing and stellar winds.. At the end of stellar evolution, stars initially more massive than $`M_{\mathrm{WR}}=25`$ $`M_{}`$ are exploded as Type Ib supernovae, while stars of initial mass within $`8M_{}`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{WR}}`$ are assumed to explode as Type II SNe. Nucleosynthesis yields have been taken from meynet97  for the pre-supernova evolution and from woosley95 ; wlw95  for Type II and Type Ib supernova explosions, respectively. Note that Type II SN yields have only been published for stars without mass loss and Type Ib yields have only been calculated for pure Helium stars. In order to obtain consistent nucleosynthesis yields for Type II supernovae we followed the suggestion of maeder92  and linked the explosive nucleosynthesis models of woosley95  to the Geneva tracks via the core mass at the beginning of Carbon burning. For Type Ib SN we used the core mass at the beginning of He core burning to link evolutionary tracks to nucleosynthesis calculations.

Evolutionary synthesis models were calculated using a stochastic initial mass function where random masses were assigned to individual stars following a Salpeter initial mass spectrum ($`d\mathrm{log}\xi /d\mathrm{log}M=1.35`$) until the number of stars in a given mass-interval reproduces the observed population. Typical results for a rich OB association (51 stars within $`1540`$ $`M_{}`$) are shown in Fig. 1. <sup>26</sup>Al production turns on at about $`12`$ Myr when the isotope starts to be expelled by stellar winds into the interstellar medium. Stellar <sup>26</sup>Al production reaches its maximum around 3 Myr when the most massive stars enter the Wolf-Rayet phase. Explosive nucleosynthesis sets on around 4.5 Myr for Type Ib and around 7 Myr for Type II supernovae, leading to a second peak in the <sup>26</sup>Al yield around 8 Myr. After this peak, a slightly declining <sup>26</sup>Al yield is maintained by Type II explosions until the last Type II SN exploded around 20 Myr. Afterwards, the exponential decay quickly removes the remaining <sup>26</sup>Al nuclei from the ISM.

We also calculated the time-dependent ionising luminosity ($`\lambda <912`$ Å) of the population from which we derived the equivalent O7V star <sup>26</sup>Al yield $`Y_{26}^{\mathrm{O7V}}`$. This quantity measures the amount of <sup>26</sup>Al ejected per ionising photon normalised on the ionisation power of an O7V star. The analysis of COMPTEL 1.809 MeV data suggests a galaxywide constant value of $`Y_{26}^{\mathrm{O7V}}=(1.0\pm 0.3)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^4`$ $`M_{}`$ knoedl99 . Interestingly, the COMPTEL value is only reproduced for a very young population during a quite short age period ($`2.55`$ Myrs). For younger populations too few <sup>26</sup>Al is produced with respect to the ionising luminosity, leading to much lower equivalent yields. For older populations the ionising luminosity drops rapidly, resulting in much higher $`Y_{26}^{\mathrm{O7V}}`$ values. Thus, the equivalent O7V star <sup>26</sup>Al yield is a quite sensitive measure of the population age. In particular, the measurement of $`Y_{26}^{\mathrm{O7V}}`$ for individual OB associations or young open clusters provides a powerful tool to identify the dominant <sup>26</sup>Al progenitors.

## Application to the Cygnus region

We applied our evolutionary synthesis model to the Cygnus region from which prominent 1.809 MeV line emission has been detected by COMPTEL delRio96 . In delRio96  the authors modelled <sup>26</sup>Al nucleosynthesis in Cygnus by estimating the contribution from individual Wolf-Rayet stars and supernova remnants that are observed in this region. This approach, however, suffers from considerable uncertainties due to the poorly known distances to these objects. In this work we performed a complete census of OB associations and young open clusters in the Cygnus region. Individual association or cluster distances have been estimated by the method of spectroscopic parallaxes, ages have been determined by isochrone fitting. Distance and age uncertainties have also been estimated and were incorporated in the analysis by means of a Bayesian method. The richness was estimated for each association or cluster by building H-R diagrams for member stars and by counting the number of stars within mass-intervals that are probably not affected by incompleteness or evolutionary effects. In total we included 6 OB associations and 19 young open clusters in our analysis which house 94 O type and 13 Wolf-Rayet stars.

For each OB association or cluster, 100 independent evolutionary synthesis models were calculated that differ by the actual stellar population that has been realised by the random sampling procedure. In this way we include the uncertainties about the unknown number of massive stars in the associations that have already disappeared in supernova explosions. From these samples the actual age and distance uncertainties are eliminated by marginalisation, leading to a probability distribution for all quantities of interest. Note that in this approach an age uncertainty is equivalent to an age spread in the cluster formation, hence the possibility of non-instantaneous star formation has been taken into account. The results for all individual associations have been combined by marginalisation to predictions for the entire Cygnus region.

The predicted equivalent O7V star <sup>26</sup>Al yield amounts to $`(0.31.2)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^4`$ $`M_{}`$ and is compatible with the COMPTEL observation, pointing to an extremely young population that is at the origin of <sup>26</sup>Al. Indeed, while $`90\%`$ of the <sup>26</sup>Al is produced in our model by stellar nucleosynthesis (during the main sequence and subsequent Wolf-Rayet phase), only $`10\%`$ may be attributed to explosive nucleosynthesis, mainly in Type Ib SN events. This is also reflected in the low <sup>60</sup>Fe yields ($`(07)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^8`$ ph cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup>) that are predicted by our model since <sup>60</sup>Fe is assumed to be only produced in supernovae.

However, in absolute quantities, our model underestimates the free-free intensity in Cygnus by about a factor 3 while the total <sup>26</sup>Al flux is low by a factor of 5. This points towards a possible incompleteness of our massive star census which has been based on surveys of OB associations and young open clusters in Cygnus available in the literature. Indeed, while we identify only 95 OB stars in Cyg OB2, reddish66  estimated 400 OB members in this association, indicating only $`25\%`$ completeness of our census. Taking $`25\%`$ as a typical completeness fraction for our OB association census and assuming that the young open cluster census is complete, we obtain a free-free intensity of $`0.25`$ mK and an <sup>26</sup>Al flux of $`\mathrm{4.3\hspace{0.17em}10}^5`$ ph cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> – values that are in fairly good agreement with the observations ($`0.26`$ mK from DMR microwave data and $`(7.9\pm 2.4)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^5`$ ph cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> from COMPTEL 1.8 MeV observations; see Plüschke et al., these proceedings). However, we do not predict any noticeable amount of <sup>60</sup>Fe for the Cygnus region – a prediction which hopefully will be soon verified by the INTEGRAL observatory. We would like to stress that INTEGRAL has the potential to partially resolve some OB associations and young open clusters in the nearby Cygnus region, and thus may provide important new insights in massive star nucleosynthesis in this area.