Related papers: Globular clusters as laboratories for stellar evol…
Context. Globular clusters host multiple populations of long-lived low-mass stars whose origin remains an open question. Several scenarios have been proposed to explain the associated photometric and spectroscopic peculiarities. They…
We probe the evolution of globular clusters that could form in giant molecular clouds within high-redshift galaxies. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the large and dense enough gas clouds assemble naturally in current hierarchical…
Most globular clusters in the local group show multiple stellar populations, a pattern defined by variations of several light elements, with some also displaying dispersions in heavy elements. Since helium is the most immediate product of…
The formation of stars with light-element abundance variations in globular clusters and the subsequent dynamical evolution of these multiple populations remains an open question. One of the most widely discussed is the AGB scenario, in…
The recent measurements of internal variations of helium in Galactic and extragalactic Globular Clusters (GCs) set binding constraints to the models of formation of Multiple Populations (MPs) in GCs, and gave rise, at the same time, to…
Galactic globular clusters are not simple stellar populations. And nothing is simple in their study, basically because we try to reconstruct chains of events that occurred at redshift z > 2-3 by observing these objects at z=0, after a…
Globular clusters are ancient stellar populations with no star formation or core-collapse supernovae. Several lines of evidence suggest that globular clusters are rich in planets. If so, and if advanced civilizations can develop there, then…
Three important developments are vastly increasing our understanding of the role of binaries in the dynamical evolution of globular clusters. From the observational side, the Hubble Space Telescope has shown us detailed pictures of the…
In this paper we address the issue of the origin of some observational properties of the galactic globular cluster system. After a preliminary study of some general properties of the main evolutionary processes, we investigate the evolution…
HST has recently revealed that many among the most massive globular clusters harbor multiple stellar populations, and --most surprisingly-- some of them are extremely helium rich. How these clusters managed to generate such complex stellar…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
It is now widely established that globular clusters host robust populations of white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes throughout their lifetimes. Within clusters, dynamical processes enabled by stellar densities thousands to millions…
This paper explores the quantitative connection between globular clusters and the diffuse stellar population of the galaxies they are associated with. Both NGC 1399 and NGC 4486 (M87) are well suited for this kind of analysis due to their…
I shall review the latest results for the presence of diffuse light in nearby clusters, and the evidence of ongoing star formation in an intracluster Virgo field. I shall discuss how intracluster planetary nebulae can be used as excellent…
An increasing number of both photometric and spectroscopic observations over the last years have shown the existence of distinct sub-populations in many Galactic globular clusters and shattered the paradigm of globulars hosting single,…
Astronomers have constructed models of globular clusters for over 100 years. These models mainly fall into two categories: (i) static models, such as King's model and its variants, and (ii) evolutionary models. Most attention has been given…
Globular clusters were thought to be simple stellar populations, but recent photometric and spectroscopic evidence suggests that the clusters' early formation history was more complicated. In particular, clusters show star-to-star abundance…
Multiple stellar populations in the Milky Way globular clusters manifest themselves with a large variety. Although chemical abundance variations in light elements, including He, are ubiquitous, the amount of these variations is different in…
We discuss some of the key open questions regarding the formation and evolution of globular clusters (GCs) during galaxy formation and assembly within a cosmological framework. The current state-of-the-art for both observations and…
Globular clusters are ideal laboratories to study the evolution of low-mass stars. In this work we concentrate on three types of hot stars observed in globular clusters: horizontal branch stars, UV bright stars, and white dwarfs. After…