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The stellar-dynamical evolution of bound star clusters during the first few Myr is dominated by binary-binary and binary-star interactions, the rapid sinking of the most massive stars to the centre of the clusters and mass loss from…
Upon their formation, dynamically cool (collapsing) star clusters will, within only a few million years, achieve stellar mass segregation for stars down to a few solar masses, simply because of gravitational two-body encounters. Since…
The presence of protostellar disks can greatly increase the dissipation during close stellar encounters, leading to the formation of a significant population of binaries during the initial collapse and virialization of a cluster. We have…
Mass segregation is seen in many star clusters, but whether massive stars form in the center of a cluster or migrate there dynamically is still debated. N-body simulations have shown that early dynamical mass segregation is possible when…
We present the results of a set of N-body simulations following the long-term evolution of the rotational properties of star cluster models evolving in the external tidal field of their host galaxy, after an initial phase of violent…
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…
Observations and theory both suggest that star clusters form sub-virial (cool) with highly sub-structured distributions. We perform a large ensemble of N-body simulations of moderate-sized (N=1000) cool, fractal clusters to investigate…
We report results of N-body simulations of isolated star clusters, performed up to the point where the clusters are nearly completely dissolved. Our main focus is on the post-collapse evolution of these clusters. We find that after core…
Some young star clusters show a degree of mass segregation that is inconsistent with the effects of standard two-body relaxation from an initially unsegregated system without substructure, in virial equilibrium, and it is unclear whether…
All gravitationally bound clusters expand, due to both gas loss from their most massive members and binary heating. All are eventually disrupted tidally, either by passing molecular clouds or the gravitational potential of their host…
We summarize the results of recent theoretical work on the dynamical evolution of globular clusters containing primordial binaries. Even a very small initial binary fraction (e.g., 10%) can play a key role in supporting a cluster against…
Observations and theoretical work suggest that globular clusters may be born with initially very large binary fractions. We present first results from our newly modified Monte-Carlo cluster evolution code, which treats binary interactions…
This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects…
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…
A novel way of looking at the evolution of star clusters is presented. With a dynamical temperature, given by the mean kinetic energy of the cluster stars, and a dynamical luminosity, which is defined as the kinetic energy of the stars…
We study the evolution of populations of binary stars within massive cluster-forming regions. We simulate the formation of young massive star clusters within giant molecular clouds with masses ranging from 2 x 10$^{4}$ to 3.2 x 10$^{5}$…
Galactic globular clusters are old, dense star systems typically containing 10\super{4}--10\super{7} stars. As an old population of stars, globular clusters contain many collapsed and degenerate objects. As a dense population of stars,…
Fragmentation and fission of giant molecular clouds occasionally results in a pair of gravitationally bound star clusters that orbit their mutual centre of mass for some time, under the influence of internal and external perturbations. We…
We have studied the dynamical evolution of rotating globular clusters with direct $N$-body models. Our initial models are rotating King models; we obtained results for both equal-mass systems and systems composed out of two mass components.…
Dense star clusters are spectacular self-gravitating stellar systems in our Galaxy and across the Universe - in many respects. They populate disks and spheroids of galaxies as well as almost every galactic center. In massive elliptical…