Related papers: Nuclear Star Clusters and Bulges
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…
High spatial resolution, near-infrared imaging and spectroscopy of the nuclear star cluster have given key new insights about the dynamics, evolution and mass distribution in the Milky Way Center. The central parsec is powered by a cluster…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
This talk is an attempt to combine recent insights into the nature of the nuclear star clusters in galaxies of various morphologies into a coherent (albeit simplistic) picture for their formation, growth, and eventual destruction.
We review possible dynamical formation processes for central massive black holes in dense star clusters. We focus on the early dynamical evolution of young clusters containing a few thousand to a few million stars. One natural formation…
In the last decade star clusters have been found in the centers of spiral galaxies across all Hubble types. We here present a spectroscopic study of the exceptionally bright (10^6 - 10^8 Lsun) but compact (Re ~ 5 pc) nuclear star clusters…
In this lecture we investigate the formation and evolution of black holes in star clusters. The star clusters under consideration are generally rich, containing more than 10^4 stars, and with a density exceeding 10^4 stars/pc^3. Among these…
Nuclear stellar clusters are a common phenomenon in spirals and in starbursts galaxies, and they may be a natural consequence of the star formation processes in the central regions of galaxies. HST UV imaging of a few Seyfert 2 galaxies…
In about 40% of the Local Group galaxies star clusters have been detected so far, but the census is still incomplete. The properties of these clusters are briefly reviewed, and the impact of galaxy environment on the evolution and survival…
Studies have suggested that there is a strong correlation between the masses of nuclear star clusters (NSCs) and their host galaxies, a correlation which said to be an extension of the well-known correlations between supermassive black…
We present photometric and morphological analyses of nuclear star clusters (NSCs) -- very dense, massive star clusters present in the central regions of most galaxies -- in a sample of 33 massive disk galaxies within 20 Mpc, part of the…
Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are massive star clusters found in all types of galaxies from dwarfs to massive galaxies. Recent studies show that while low-mass NSCs in dwarf galaxies ($M_\text{gal} < 10^{9} M_\odot$) form predominantly out…
Star cluster formation is a major mode of star formation in the extreme conditions of interacting galaxies and violent starbursts. Young clusters are observed to form in a variety of such galaxies, a substantial number resembling the…
In the present-day universe, it appears that most, and perhaps all, massive stars are born in star clusters. It also appears that all star clusters contain stars drawn from an approximately universal initial mass function, so that almost…
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…
Giant elliptical galaxies, believed to be built from the merger of lesser galaxies, are known to house a massive black hole at their center rather than a compact star cluster. If low- and intermediate-mass galaxies do indeed partake in the…
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…
The strongest starbursts are observed towards galaxy nuclei, or circumnuclear regions. However in interacting galaxies, star formation is also triggered in overlap regions far from nuclei, in spiral arms and sometimes in tidal tails. What…
Populations of young star clusters show significant differences even among "normal" disk galaxies. In this contribution I discuss how properties of young cluster systems are related to those of their host galaxies, based on a recent study…
Supermassive black holes inhabit galactic nuclei, and their presence influences in crucial ways the evolution of the stellar distribution. The low-density cores observed in bright galaxies are probably a result of black hole infall, while…