Related papers: IAU Commission 37 "Star Clusters and Associations"…
Star clusters are fundamental units of stellar feedback and unique tracers of their host galactic properties. In this review, we will first focus on their constituents, i.e.\ detailed insight into their stellar populations and their…
Star clusters are ideal tracers of star formation activity in systems outside the volume that can be studied using individual, resolved stars. These unresolved clusters span orders of magnitude in brightness and mass, and their formation is…
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…
Stellar populations, building blocks of galaxies, are direct tracers of the star formation history, the chemical enrichment and the assembly of galaxies in the Universe. They therfore allow us to understand how galaxies formed and evolved.…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
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,…
Open and globular star clusters have served as benchmarks for the study of stellar evolution due to their supposed nature as simple stellar populations of the same age and metallicity. After a brief review of some of the pioneering work…
(Abridged) The formation and evolution of star cluster populations are related to the galactic environment. Cluster formation is governed by processes acting on galactic scales, and star cluster disruption is driven by the tidal field. In…
The evolution of star clusters is studied using N-body simulations in which the evolution of single stars and binaries are taken self-consistently into account. Initial conditions are chosen to represent relatively young Galactic open…
The formation of stellar clusters dictates the pace at which galaxies evolve, and solving the question of their formation will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of the Universe as a whole. While it is well known that star clusters…
Stars mostly form in groups consisting of a few dozen to several ten thousand members. For 30 years, theoretical models provide a basic concept of how such star clusters form and develop: they originate from the gas and dust of collapsing…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…
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…
Star clusters and their stellar populations play a significant role in the context of galaxy evolution, across space (from local to high redshift) and time (from currently forming to fossil remnants). We are now within reach of answering a…
Stars do not generally form in isolation. Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds. Feedback from clustered stars is almost…
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…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…
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…
Most stars form in highly clustered environments within molecular clouds, but eventually disperse into the distributed stellar field population. Exactly how the stellar distribution evolves from the embedded stage into gas-free associations…