Related papers: Survivability of a star cluster in a dispersing mo…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of star clusters during their formation, assuming that they are born from a turbulent starless clump of a given mass that is embedded within a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a…
The duration of starbursts is important for determining how they are regulated and the impact they have on their environment. Starbursts contain numerous prominent star clusters which typically comprise in total ~20% of the ultraviolet…
We simulate the dynamics of fractal star clusters, in order to investigate the evolution of substructure in recently formed clusters. The velocity dispersion is found to be the key parameter determining the survival of substructure. In…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
The past decade has seen an increase of star formation studies made at the molecular cloud scale, motivated mostly by the deployment of a wealth of sensitive infrared telescopes and instruments. Embedded clusters, long recognised as the…
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…
Some of the youngest stars (age $\lesssim 10$ Myr) are clustered, while many others are observed scattered throughout star forming regions or in complete isolation. It has been intensively debated whether the scattered or isolated stars…
Most stars do not form in isolation but as part of a cluster comprising anywhere between a few dozen to several million stars with stellar densities ranging from 0.01 to several 10$^5$ \Msun pc$^{-3}$. The majority of these clusters…
A young open cluster is a 2-phase system: an ensemble of stars move in a gaseous medium (the mother molecular cloud). The dynamics and thermodynamics of the system, and so its evolution and final fate (is it stable or unstable?), strongly…
More and more observations indicate that young star clusters could retain imprints of their formation process. In particular, the degree of substructuring and rotation are possibly the direct result of the collapse of the parent molecular…
A large fraction of stars forming in our galaxy are born within clusters embedded in giant molecular clouds. In these environments, the background UV radiation fields impinging upon circumstellar disks can often dominate over the radiation…
Most stars form in compact, dense embedded clusters with memberships ranging from a dozen stars to many millions of stars. Embedded clusters containing more than a few hundred stars also contain O stars that disrupt the nebula abruptly.…
After the stars of a new, embedded star cluster have formed they blow the remaining gas out of the cluster. Especially winds of high mass stars and definitely the on-set of the first super novae can remove the residual gas from a cluster.…
Most stars form in star clusters and stellar associated. To understand the roles of star cluster environments in shaping the dynamical evolution of planetary systems, we carry out direct $N$-body simulations of four planetary systems models…
Recent observations have revealed a variety of young star clusters, including embedded systems, young massive clusters, and associations. We study the formation and dynamical evolution of these clusters using a combination of simulations…
Observations suggest that star formation occurs in only one or two crossing times for a range of scales spanning a factor of 1000. These observations include (1) measurements of embedded cluster ages in comparison with the cloud core…
Young stars are mostly found in dense stellar environments, and even our own Solar system may have formed in a star cluster. Here, we numerically explore the evolution of planetary systems similar to our own Solar system in star clusters.…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…
In 1958 Jan Oort remarked that the lack of old clusters in the solar neighborhood (SN) implies that clusters are destroyed on a timescale of less than a Gyr. This is much shorter than the predicted dissolution time of clusters due to…