Related papers: Migration of Star Clusters and Nuclear Rings
Stars form with a complex and highly structured distribution. For a smooth star cluster to form from these initial conditions, the star cluster must erase this substructure. We study how substructure is removed using N-body simulations that…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
As a stellar group forms within its parent molecular cloud, new members first appear in the deep interior. These overcrowded stars continually diffuse outward to the cloud boundary, and even beyond. Observations have so far documented only…
The study of the internal structure of star clusters provides important clues concerning their formation mechanism and dynamical evolution. There are both observational and numerical evidences indicating that open clusters evolve from an…
With the help of a statistical parameter derived from optical spectra, we show that the current star formation rate of a galaxy, falling into a cluster along a supercluster filament, is likely to undergo a sudden enhancement before the…
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…
Most formation scenarios of globular clusters assume a molecular cloud as the progenitor of the stellar system. However, it is still unclear, how this cloud is transformed into a star cluster, i.e. how the destructive processes related to…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
Stars in disks of spiral galaxies are usually assumed to remain roughly at their birth radii. This assumption is built into decades of modelling of the evolution of stellar populations in our own Galaxy and in external systems. We present…
Star clusters are observed to form in a highly compact state and with low star-formation efficiencies. If the residual gas is expelled on a dynamical time the clusters disrupt thereby (i) feeding a hot kinematical stellar component into…
We discuss the observations and theory of star cluster formation to argue that clusters form dynamically cool (subvirial) and with substructure. We then perform an ensemble of simulations of cool, clumpy (fractal) clusters and show that…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
Young, massive star clusters are the most notable and significant end products of violent star-forming episodes triggered by galaxy collisions, mergers, and close encounters. The question remains, however, whether or not at least a fraction…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
A significant fraction of clusters of galaxies are observed to have substructure, which implies that merging between clusters and subclusters is a rather common physical process of cluster formation. It still remains unclear how cluster…
Stars and star clusters form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest…
At which masses does the regime of globular clusters end and the one of dwarf galaxies begin? And what separates these two classes of hot stellar systems? We examine to what extend very massive (>10^7 Mo) young star clusters are similar to…
(Abridged) We study the nuclear star clusters in spiral galaxies of various Hubble types using spectra obtained with STIS on-board HST. We observed the nuclear clusters in 40 galaxies, selected from two previous HST/WFPC2 imaging surveys.…
Observations of globular clusters show that they have universal lognormal mass functions with a characteristic peak at $\sim 2\times 10^{5}\, {\rm{M_{\odot}}}$, but the origin of this peaked distribution is highly debated. Here we…
Globular star clusters that formed at the same cosmic time may have evolved rather differently from a dynamical point of view (because that evolution depends on the internal environment) through a variety of processes that tend…