Related papers: A clustered origin for isolated massive stars
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…
Massive stars are key players in the evolution of galaxies, yet their formation pathway remains unclear. In this work, we use data from several galaxy-wide surveys to build an unbiased dataset of ~700 massive young stellar objects (MYSOs),…
Star formation is a fundamental process for galactic evolution. One issue over the last several decades has been determining whether star formation is induced by external triggers or is self-regulated in a closed system. The role of an…
Recent simulations and observations suggest that star clusters form via the assembling of smaller sub-clusters. Because of their short relaxation time, sub-clusters experience core collapse much earlier than virialized solo-clusters, which…
Recent observations of young embedded clumpy clusters and statistical identifications of binary star clusters have provided new insights into the formation process and subsequent dynamical evolution of star clusters. The early dynamical…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
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…
We propose that bound, young massive stellar clusters form from dense clouds that have escape speeds greater than the sound speed in photo-ionized gas. In these clumps, radiative feedback in the form of gas ionization is bottled up,…
Young star clusters like R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud and NGC 3603, Westerlund 1, and 2 in the Milky Way are dynamically more evolved than expected based on their current relaxation times. In particular, the combination of a high…
A great burst of cluster formation increased the rate at which open clusters were formed in the Large Magellanic Cloud 3-5 Gyr ago by at least an order of magnitude. On the other hand the rate of star formation ~ 4 Gyr appears to have…
Star clusters are observed to form in a highly compact state and with low star-formation efficiencies, and only 10 per cent of all clusters appear to survive to middle- and old-dynamical age. If the residual gas is expelled on a dynamical…
Scenarios that invoke multiple episodes of star formation within young globular clusters (GCs) to explain the observed chemical and photometric anomalies in GCs, require that clusters can retain the stellar ejecta of the stars within them…
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…
In this contribution we review our recent numerical work discussing the essential role of the local cluster environment in assembling massive stars. First we show that massive stars are formed from low mass pre-stellar cores and become…
We show that massive stars and stellar clusters are formed simultaneously, the global evolution of the forming cluster is what allows the central stars to become massive. We predict that massive star forming clumps, such as those observed…
Stars in globular clusters (GCs) exhibit a peculiar chemical pattern with strong abundance variations in light elements along with a constant abundance in heavy elements. These abundance anomalies can be explained by a primordial pollution…
More than 50 years have elapsed since the first studies of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The wealth of data accumulated since then has not only revealed a large cluster system, but also a diversified one, filling loci in the age,…
There are at least 2 distinct mechanisms for the formation of young massive clusters (YMC), all of which require galactic-scale processes. One operates in harrassed fragile galaxies, in the dense cores of low mass galaxies, at the ends of…
Recent observations have found that the age distribution of star clusters (SCs) in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) shows a sharp peak around 2 Gyr ago. However, it is theoretically unclear what physical processes are responsible for such…
Star clusters are formed in molecular clouds which are believed to be the birth places of most stars. From recent observational data, Lada & Lada(2003) estimated that only 4 to 7% of the proto-clusters have survived. Many factors could…