Related papers: Does sub-cluster merging accelerate mass segregati…
Stellar associations can be discerned as overdensities of sources not only in the physical space but also in the velocity space. The common motion of their members, gradually eroded by the galactic tidal field, is partially reminiscent of…
It is well known that the energy input from massive stars dominates the thermal and mechanical heating of typical regions in the interstellar medium of galaxies. These effects are amplified tremendously in the immediate environment of young…
The formation of massive stars in close binary systems is complicated due to their high radiation pressure, the crowded environment and the expected minimum separation for fragmentation being many times greater than the orbital separation.…
Two main models coexist for the environment in which stars form. The clustered model stipulates that the bulk of star formation occurs within dense embedded clusters, but only a minority of them survive the residual gas expulsion phase…
Nearby dwarf irregular galaxies were searched for compact star clusters using data from the HST archives. Three of the galaxies were found to host both populous clusters (M_V<-9.5 at a fiducial age of 10 Myr) and super-star clusters…
The young star clusters we observe today are the building blocks of a new generation of stars and planets in our Galaxy and beyond. Despite their fundamental role we still lack knowledge about the conditions under which star clusters form…
We combine star formation along the `main sequence', quiescence, and clustering and merging to produce an empirical model for the evolution of individual galaxies. Main sequence star formation alone would significantly steepen the stellar…
Star formation occurs in hierarchical patterns in both space and time. Galaxies form large regions on the scale of the interstellar Jeans length and these large regions apparently fragment into giant molecular clouds and cloud cores in a…
Stellar mergers are responsible for a large variety of astrophysical phenomena. They form blue straggler stars, give rise to spectacular transients, and produce some of the most massive stars in the Universe. Here, we focus on mergers from…
We explore the kinematics and star formation history of the Scorpius Centaurus (Sco-Cen) OB association following the initial identification of sequential, linearly aligned chains of clusters. Building upon our characterization of the…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. As these clusters typically contain more mass in gas than in stars, accretion can play an important role in determining the final stellar masses. Numerical simulations of gas…
The existence of older stars within a young star cluster can be interpreted to imply that star formation occurs on time scales longer than a free-fall time of a pre-cluster cloud core. Here the idea is explored that these older stars are…
Massive clumps tend to fragment into clusters of cores and condensations, some of which form high-mass stars. In this work, we study the structure of massive clumps at different scales, analyze the fragmentation process, and investigate the…
In large scale structure formation, massive systems assemble through the hierarchical merging of less massive ones. Galaxy clusters, being the most massive and thus the most recent collapsed structures, still grow by accreting smaller…
We present a study of the hierarchical clustering of the young stellar clusters in six local (3--15 Mpc) star-forming galaxies using Hubble Space Telescope broad band WFC3/UVIS UV and optical images from the Treasury Program LEGUS (Legacy…
Stars in star clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas. However, massive, old globular clusters -- with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses of several hundred thousand solar…
We present an analysis of the positions and ages of young star clusters in eight local galaxies to investigate the connection between the age difference and separation of cluster pairs. We find that star clusters do not form uniformly but…
We investigate the formation of both clustered and distributed populations of young stars in a single molecular cloud. We present a numerical simulation of a 10,000 solar mass elongated, turbulent, molecular cloud and the formation of over…
At the earliest evolutionary stages, massive star-forming regions are deeply embedded within their natal cores and not observable at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Interferometric high-spatial resolution mm dust continuum…
We propose that synchronized triggering of star formation in gas-rich galaxies is possible during major mergers of cluster of galaxies, based on new numerical simulations of the time evolution of the physical properties of the intracluster…