Related papers: A new model for the multiple stellar populations w…
Globular cluster systems (GCSs) are vital tools for investigating the violent star formation histories of their host galaxies. This violence could e.g. have been triggered by galaxy interactions or mergers. The basic observational…
An increasing number of photometric observations of multiple stellar populations in Galactic globular clusters is seriously challenging the paradigm of GCs hosting single, simple stellar populations. These multiple populations manifest…
There has been recent speculation (Davies & King 2005) that the cores of intermediate-mass stars stripped of their envelopes by tidal interaction with the supermassive black hole in the Galactic centre could form a population…
Recent results by Bensby and collaborators on the ages of microlensed stars in the Galactic bulge have challenged the picture of an exclusively old stellar population. However, these age estimates have not been independently confirmed. In…
The current generation of millimeter interferometers have revealed a population of compact (r <~ 0.1 pc), massive (M ~ 100 Msun) gas cores that are the likely progenitors of massive stars. I review models for the evolution of these objects…
We have recently shown that the $\sim2$ Gyr old Large Magellanic Cloud star cluster NGC 1978 hosts multiple populations in terms of star-to-star abundance variations in [N/Fe]. These can be seen as a splitting or spread in the sub-giant and…
In dense stellar clusters like galactic nuclei and globular clusters stellar densities are so high that stars might physically collide with each other. In galactic nuclei the energy and power output can be close, and even exceed, to those…
In this review, I present the case for how massive stars may form through stellar collisions. This mechanism requires very high stellar densities, up to 4 orders of magnitude higher than are observed in the cores of dense young clusters. In…
Using a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation of merging proto-galaxies at high redshift from the FIRE project, with explicit treatments of star formation and stellar feedback in the interstellar medium, we investigate the formation of…
We consider whether stellar collisions can explain the observed depletion of red giants in the Galactic center. We model the stellar population with two different IMFs: 1) the Miller-Scalo and 2) a much flatter IMF. In the former case,…
The infall and merger scenario of massive clusters in the Milky Way's potential well, as one of the Milky Way formation mechanisms, is reexamined to understand how the stars of the merging clusters are redistributed during and after the…
Merging has been proposed to explain multiple populations in globular clusters (GCs) where there is a spread in iron abundance (hereafter, iron-complex GCs). By means of N-body simulations, we investigate if merging is consistent with the…
A growing number of recent observations have revealed that the Galactic globular cluster (GC) omega Cen is not the only GC that shows abundance spread in heavy elements (e.g., Fe). In order to understand the origin of the Galactic GCs with…
We present new determinations of the iron abundance for 220 stars belonging to the stellar system Terzan 5 in the Galactic bulge. The spectra have been acquired with FLAMES at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory…
Recently, diffuse and extended sources in TeV gamma-rays as well as in X-rays have been detected in the direction of the Galactic globular cluster (GC) Terzan 5. Remarkably, this is among the brightest GCs detected in the GeV regime. The…
We present an extenstive literature compilation of age, metallicity, and chemical abundance pattern information for the 41 Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) studied by Schiavon et al. (2005). Our compilation constitutes a notable…
We model the dynamical interaction between the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds and their corresponding stellar cluster populations. Our goal is to explore whether the lack of old clusters ($\gtrsim 7$ Gyr) in the Small Magellanic Cloud…
The ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG) NGC1052-DF2 has a low dark matter content and hosts a very unusual globular cluster (GC) population, with a median luminosity $\sim4$ times higher than in most galaxies and containing about 5~per~cent of the…
Multi-wavelength observations of molecular and ionized gas indicate that GMCs are short-lived, generally dispersing within one or two dynamical timescales. To investigate the physical origin of these short lifetimes and the role of star…
We present a novel method combining existing cosmological simulations and orbital integration to study the hierarchical assembly of globular cluster (GC) populations in the Milky Way (MW). Our method models the growth and evolution of GC…