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Impact of initial models and variable accretion rates on the pre-main-sequence evolution of massive and intermediate-mass stars and the early evolution of HII regions

Massive star formation requires the accretion of gas at high rate while the star is already bright. Its actual luminosity depends sensitively on the stellar structure. We compute pre-main-sequence tracks for massive and intermediate-mass stars with variable accretion rates and study the evolution of stellar radius, effective temperature and ionizing luminosity, starting at $2\,M_\odot$ with convective or radiative structures. The radiative case shows a much stronger swelling of the protostar for high accretion rates than the convective case. For radiative structures, the star is very sensitive to the accretion rate and reacts quickly to accretion bursts, leading to considerable changes in photospheric properties on timescales as short as 100 - 1000 yr. The evolution for convective structures is much less influenced by the instantaneous accretion rate, and produces a monotonically increasing ionizing flux that can be many orders of magnitude smaller than in the radiative case. For massive stars, it results in a delay of the HII region expansion by up to 10,000 yr. In the radiative case, the HII region can potentially be engulfed by the star during the swelling, which never happens in the convective case. We conclude that the early stellar structure has a large impact on the radiative feedback during the pre-main-sequence evolution of massive protostars and introduces an important uncertainty that should be taken into account. Because of their lower effective temperatures, our convective models may hint at a solution to an observed discrepancy between the luminosity distribution functions of massive young stellar objects and compact HII regions.