WARPFIELD-EMP: The self-consistent prediction of emission lines from evolving H II regions in dense molecular clouds

We present the warpfield emission predictor, warpfield-emp, which couples the 1D stellar feedback code warpfield with the cloudy H iiregion/PDR code and the polaris radiative transfer code, in order to make detailed predictions for the time-dependent line and continuum emission arising from the H II region and PDR surrounding an evolving star cluster. warpfield-emp accounts for a wide range of physical processes (photoionization, stellar winds, supernovae, radiation pressure, gravity, thermal conduction, radiative cooling, dust extinction etc.) and yet runs quickly enough to allow us to explore broad ranges of different model parameters. We compare the results of an extensive set of models with SITELLE observations of a large sample of H II regions in NGC 628 and find very good agreement, particularly for the highest signal-to-noise observations. We show that our approach of modelling individual clouds from first principles (instead of in terms of dimensionless quantities such as the ionization parameter) allows us to avoid long-standing degeneracies in the interpretation of H II region diagnostics and enables us to relate these diagnostics to important physical parameters such as cloud mass or cluster age. Finally, we explore the implications of our models regarding the reliability of simple metallicity diagnostics, the properties of long-lived embedded clusters, and the role played by winds and supernovae in regulating H II region and PDR line emission.