Related papers: The initial conditions of observed star clusters -…
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…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. These systems, containing from tens to thousands of stars and typically significant mass in gas in the youngest systems, evolve due to a combination of stellar and star-gas…
Close encounters between stars in star forming regions are important as they can perturb or destroy protoplanetary discs, young planetary systems, and stellar multiple systems. We simulate simple, viralised, equal-mass $N$-body star…
Context. When trying to derive the star cluster physical parameters of the M33 galaxy using broad-band unresolved ground-based photometry, previous studies mainly made use of simple stellar population models, shown in the recent years to be…
We report on the identification of 54 embedded clusters around 217 massive protostellar candidates of which 34 clusters are new detections. The embedded clusters are identified as stellar surface density enhancements in the 2 $\mu$m All Sky…
A number of recent observational studies of Galactic globular clusters have measured the variation in the slope of a cluster's stellar mass function $\alpha$ with clustercentric distance $r$. In order to gather a deeper understanding of the…
We predict the survival time of initially bound star clusters in the solar neighbourhood taking into account: (1) stellar evolution, (2) tidal stripping, (3) shocking by spiral arms and (4) encounters with giant molecular clouds. We find…
The past few years have seen dramatic improvements in the scope and realism of star cluster simulations. Accurate treatments of stellar evolution, coupled with robust descriptions of all phases of binary evolution, have been incorporated…
Young clusters are observed to form in a variety of interacting galaxies and violent starbursts, a substantial number resembling the progenitors of the well-studied globular clusters in mass and size. By studying young clusters in merger…
We simulate the dynamics of fractal star clusters, in order to investigate the evolution of substructure in recently formed clusters. The velocity dispersion is found to be the key parameter determining the survival of substructure. In…
Our current understanding of the stellar initial mass function and massive star evolution suggests that young globular clusters may have formed hundreds to thousands of stellar-mass black holes, the remnants of stars with initial masses…
Tidally limited star clusters are started on nearly circular orbits in the dark matter sub-halos present at high redshift and evolved with an n-body code augmented with gravitational interactions in the clusters. The tidally removed stars…
We investigate the contraction of accreting protoclusters using an extension of n-body techniques that incorporates the accretional growth of stars from the gaseous reservoir in which they are embedded. Following on from Monte Carlo studies…
We use a representative sample of 65 galaxy clusters observed with the Einstein IPC to constrain the range of cluster X-ray morphologies. We develop and apply quantitative and reproducible measures to constrain the intrinsic distributions…
Several observational and theoretical studies suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) slope for massive stars in globular clusters (GCs) depends on the initial cloud density and metallicity, such that the IMF becomes increasingly…
Observations indicate that present-day star formation in the Milky Way disk takes place in stellar ensembles or clusters rather than in isolation. Bound, long lived stellar groups are known as open clusters. They gradually lose stars and in…
We present a new technique to quantify cluster-to-cluster variations in the observed present-day stellar mass functions of a large sample of star clusters. Our method quantifies these differences as a function of both the stellar mass and…
The analysis of the distribution of stars in open clusters may yield important information on the star formation process and early dynamical evolution of stellar clusters. Here we address this issue by systematically characterizing the…
We have developed a novel Monte Carlo method for simulating the dynamical evolution of stellar systems in arbitrary geometry. The orbits of stars are followed in a smooth potential represented by a basis-set expansion and perturbed after…
A concordance model for angular momentum evolution has been developed by multiple investigators. This approach postulates that star forming regions and clusters are an evolutionary sequence which can be modeled with assumptions about the…