Related papers: An alternative method to study star cluster disrup…
How stellar clusters disrupt, and over what timescales, is intimately linked with how they form. Here, we review the theory and observations of cluster disruption, both the suggested initial rapid dissolution phase (infant mortality) and…
Star clusters are found in all sorts of environments and their formation and evolution is inextricably linked to the star formation process. Their eventual destruction can result from a number of factors at different times, but the process…
The age distributions of stellar cluster populations have long been proposed to probe the recent formation history of the host galaxy. However, progress is hampered by the limited understanding of cluster disruption by evaporation and tidal…
We present new tests for disruption mechanisms of star clusters based on the bivariate mass-age distribution g(M,\tau). In particular, we derive formulae for g(M,\tau) for two idealized models in which the rate of disruption depends on the…
Star clusters are often used as tracers of major star formation events in external galaxies as they can be studied up to much larger distances than individual stars. It is vital to understand their evolution if they are used to derive, for…
This article reviews some recent studies of the mass, age, and space distributions of star clusters, with a primary focus on the large population of clusters in the interacting Antennae galaxies. Some of the highlights of these studies are…
We compare the observed bivariate distribution of masses(M) and ages(t) of star clusters in the LMC with the predicted distributions g(M,t) from 3 idealized models for the disruption of star clusters: (1)sudden mass-dependent…
We present a framework for understanding the demographics of star cluster systems, and develop a toy model which incorporates a universal initial power law mass function, selected formation histories, selected disruption laws, and a…
The distribution of the number of clusters as a function of mass M and age T suggests that clusters get eroded or dispersed in a regular way over time, such that the cluster number decreases inversely as an approximate power law with T…
The evolution of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds has been the subject of significant recent controversy, particularly regarding the importance and length of the earliest, largely mass-independent disruption phase (referred to as…
Aims: Based on our well-determined sample of open clusters in the all-sky catalogue ASCC-2.5 we derive new linear sizes of some 600 clusters, and investigate the effect of mass segregation of stars in open clusters. Methods: Using…
We study the stellar cluster population in two adjacent fields in the nearby, face-on spiral galaxy, M83, using WFC3/HST imaging. The clusters are selected through visual inspection to be centrally concentrated, symmetric, and resolved on…
Infant mortality brought about by the expulsion of a star cluster's natal gas is widely invoked to explain cluster statistics at different ages. While a well studied problem, most recent studies of gas expulsion's effect on a cluster have…
We determine the age distribution of star clusters in the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038/9) for two mass-limited samples (M > 3 x 10^4 M_{\odot} and M > 2 x 10^5 M_{\odot}). This is based on integrated broadband UBVI and narrowband H-alpha…
In many different galactic environments the cluster initial mass function (CIMF) is well described by a power-law with index -2. This implies a linear relation between the mass of the most massive cluster (M_max) and the number of clusters.…
To first order, the initial cluster luminosity function appears to be universal. This means that the brightest young cluster in a galaxy can be predicted from the total number of young clusters based purely on statistics. This suggests that…
Using high-resolution, multiple-passband Hubble Space Telescope images spanning the entire optical/near-infrared wavelength range, we obtained a statistically complete sample, $U$-band selected sample of 846 extended star clusters across…
The mass of unresolved young star clusters derived from spectro-photometric data may well be off by a factor of 2 or more once the migration of massive stars driven by mass segregation is accounted for. We quantify this effect for a large…
We investigate the impact of the star formation efficiency in cluster forming cores on the evolution of the mass in star clusters over the age range 1-100Myr, when star clusters undergo their infant weight-loss/mortality phase. Assuming a…
The study of young massive clusters can provide key information for the formation of globular clusters, as they are often considered analogues. A currently unanswered question in this field is how long these massive clusters remain embedded…