Related papers: Blue Stragglers in Globular Clusters: Observations…
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…
Blue straggler stars (BSSs) are the most massive stars in a cluster formed via binary or higher-order stellar interactions. Though the exact nature of such formation scenarios is difficult to pin down, we provide observational constraints…
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…
The predicted rate of binary black hole mergers from galactic fields can vary over several orders of magnitude and is extremely sensitive to the assumptions of stellar evolution. But in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters,…
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…
We report the results of new SPH calculations of parabolic collisions between two main-sequence stars in a globular cluster. Such collisions are directly relevant to the formation of blue stragglers. In particular, we consider parent stars…
We present an end-to-end description of the formation process of globular clusters (GCs) which combines a treatment for their formation and dynamical evolution within galaxy haloes with a state-of-the-art semi-analytic simulation of galaxy…
The population of binary black hole mergers observed in gravitational waves, together with astrophysical simulations, can help us to understand the properties of the progenitors and the binary formation mechanisms in different astrophysical…
We present new (B,I) photometry for the globular cluster systems in eight Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs), obtained with the ACS/WFC camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. In the very rich cluster systems that reside within these giant…
The growing number of binary black hole mergers detected through gravitational waves offers unprecedented insight into their underlying population, yet their astrophysical formation channels remain unresolved. We present a new method to…
The hydrodynamics of stellar collisions and mergers is discussed in the context of blue straggler formation. Emphasis is placed on the very important question of hydrodynamic mixing during the merger process. Recent results of…
The color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of young star clusters show that, particularly at ultraviolet wavelengths, their upper main sequences (MSs) bifurcate into a sequence comprising the bulk population and a blue periphery. The spatial…
Globular clusters are considered to be likely breeding grounds for compact binary mergers. In this paper, we demonstrate how the gravitational-wave signals produced by compact object mergers can act as tracers of globular cluster formation…
Globular cluster systems exhibit a bewildering variety of characteristics. No single scenario appears to be able to account for the wide range of specific globular cluster frequencies that are observed in galaxies of various types. The…
We use the HB morphology of 48 Galactic GCs to study the radial distributions of the different stellar populations known to exist in globular clusters. Assuming that the (extremely) blue HB stars correspond to stars enriched in Helium and…
The parameter A+, defined as the area enclosed between the cumulative radial distribution of blue straggler stars (BSSs) and that of a reference population, is a powerful indicator of the level of BSS central segregation. As part of the…
We study the evolution of binary stars in globular clusters using a new Monte Carlo approach combining a population synthesis code (StarTrack), and a simple treatment of dynamical interactions in the dense cluster core using a new tool for…
We investigate the dynamical formation and evolution of binaries containing neutron stars in dense globular clusters. Our numerical simulations combine a simple Monte Carlo prescription for stellar dynamics, a sophisticated binary…
The growing number of black hole binary (BHB) mergers detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) have the potential to enable an unprecedented characterization of the physical processes and astrophysical…
The presence of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters leads to a complex dynamical environment that significantly influences the evolution of binary stars, which in turn impacts the evolution of the cluster itself. For this…