Most Stars (and Planets?) Are Born in Intense Radiation Fields

Protostars and young stars are strongly spatially ‘clustered’ or ‘correlated’ within their natal giant molecular clouds. We demonstrate that such clustering leads to the conclusion that the incident bolometric radiative flux upon a random young star/disc is enhanced (relative to volume-averaged fluxes) by a factor that increases with the total stellar mass of the complex. Because the Galactic cloud mass function is top-heavy, the typical star in our Galaxy experienced a much stronger radiative environment than those forming in well-observed nearby (but relatively small) clouds, exceeding fluxes in the Orion Nebular Cluster by factors of ≳30. Heating of the circumstellar disc around a median young star is dominated by this external radiation beyond ∼50 au. And if discs are not well shielded by ambient dust, external ultraviolet irradiation can dominate over the host star down to sub-au scales. Another consequence of stellar clustering is an extremely broad Galaxy-wide distribution of incident flux (spanning >10 decades), with half the Galactic star formation in a substantial ‘tail’ towards even more intense background radiation. We also show that the strength of external irradiation is amplified superlinearly in high-density environments such as the Galactic Centre, starbursts, or high-redshift galaxies.