Related papers: The Maxwell's demon of star clusters
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…
Young star clusters are often born with such high stellar densities that stellar collisions play an important role in their further evolution. In such environments the same star may participate in several tens to hundreds of collisions…
Nuclear Star Clusters are observed at the center of many galaxies. In particular in the center of the Milky Way the Nuclear Star Cluster coexists with a cen- tral supermassive black hole. The origin of these clusters is still unknown; a…
We investigate how the properties of massive black hole binaries influence the observed properties of core galaxies. We compare the observed trend in stellar mass deficit as a function of total stellar mass in the core galaxy with predicted…
Binary black holes occupy a special place in our quest for understanding the evolution of galaxies along cosmic history. If massive black holes grow at the center of (pre-)galactic structures that experience a sequence of merger episodes,…
If a black hole has a low spin value, it must double its mass to reach a high spin parameter. Although this is easily accomplished through mergers or accretion in the case of supermassive black holes in galactic centers, it is impossible…
The conditions that lead to self-regulated star formation, star bursts and the formation of massive stellar clusters are discussed. Massive stars have a strong impact on their environment, especially on the evolution of dwarf galaxies which…
The formation of compact objects like stars and black holes is strongly constrained by the requirement that nearly all of the initial angular momentum of the diffuse material from which they form must be removed or redistributed during the…
Observations and high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations indicate that massive star clusters form through a complex hierarchical assembly. We use simulations including post-Newtonian dynamics (the BIFROST code) and stellar evolution (the…
Close encounters and physical collisions between stars in young dense clusters can result in new channels for stellar evolution, and may lead to the formation of very massive stars and black holes via runaway merging. We present some…
We present a model for the formation of massive ($M > 10 M_\odot$) stars through accretion-induced collisions in the cores of embedded dense stellar clusters. This model circumvents the problem of accreting onto a star whose luminosity is…
Massive stars are often found in multiple systems, yet how binary-star systems with very close separations ($\lesssim$ au) assemble remains unresolved. We investigate the formation and inward migration of massive-star binaries in…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
Blue stragglers are thought to be formed from the merger or coalescence of two stars, but the details of their formation in clusters has been difficult to disentangle. We discuss the two main formation mechanisms for blue stragglers…
Young star clusters are dynamically active stellar systems and are a common birthplace for massive stars. Low-mass star clusters ($\sim{}300-10^3$ M$_\odot$) are more numerous than massive systems and are characterized by a two-body…
Binary black holes can form efficiently in dense young stellar clusters, such as the progenitors of globular clusters, via a combination of gravitational segregation and cluster evaporation. We use simple analytic arguments supported by…
A populations of stellar mass black hole binaries may exist in globular clusters. The dynamics of globular cluster evolution imply that there may be at most one black hole binary is a globular cluster. The population of binaries are…
Massive stars feature highly energetic stellar winds that interact whenever two such stars are bound in a binary system. The signatures of these interactions are nowadays found over a wide range of wavelengths, including the radio domain,…
Close binary central stars of planetary nebulae are key in constraining the poorly-understood common-envelope phase of evolution, which in turn is critical in understanding the formation of a wide-range of astrophysical phenomena (including…
We investigate black hole-star binaries formed in $N$-body simulations of massive, dense star clusters. We simulate 32 clusters with varying initial masses ($10^{4}~\rm M_{\odot}$ to $10^{6}~\rm M_{\odot}$), densities ($1200~\rm…