  The relative impact of radiation pressure and photoionization feedback from
young stars on surrounding gas is studied with hydrodynamic radiative transfer
(RT) simulations. The calculations focus on the single-scattering (direct
radiation pressure) and optically thick regime, and adopt a moment-based
RT-method implemented in the moving-mesh code AREPO. The source luminosity, gas
density profile and initial temperature are varied. At typical temperatures and
densities of molecular clouds, radiation pressure drives velocities of order
~20 km/s over 1-5 Myr; enough to unbind the smaller clouds. However, these
estimates ignore the effects of photoionization that naturally occur
concurrently. When radiation pressure and photoionization act together, the
latter is substantially more efficient, inducing velocities comparable to the
sound speed of the hot ionized medium (10-15 km/s) on timescales far shorter
than required for accumulating similar momentum with radiation pressure. This
mismatch allows photoionization to dominate the feedback as the heating and
expansion of gas lowers the central densities, further diminishing the impact
of radiation pressure. Our results indicate that a proper treatment of the
impact of young stars on the interstellar medium needs to primarily account for
their ionization power whereas direct radiation pressure appears to be a
secondary effect. This conclusion may change if extreme boosts of the radiation
pressure by photon trapping are assumed.
