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Star clusters are often used as tracers of major star formation events in external galaxies as they can be studied up to much larger distances than individual stars. It is vital to understand their evolution if they are used to derive, for…
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 centers of galaxies host a supermassive black hole surrounded by a dense stellar cluster. The cluster is expected to develop mass segregation, in which gravitational scatterings among the stars cause heavier objects to sink closer to…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are recently formed astronomical objects with unusually high star formation rates. We propose the collision of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) as a likely formation mechanism of YMCs, consistent with the YMC…
In this paper, we present results from a multi-stage numerical campaign to begin to explain and determine why extreme debris disk detections are rare, what types of impacts will result in extreme debris disks and what we can learn about the…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
Collisions between particles suspended in a fluid play an important role in many physical processes. As an example, collisions of microscopic water droplets in clouds are a necessary step in the production of macroscopic raindrops.…
We investigate the dynamical effects of rapid gas expulsion from the core of a young stellar cluster. The aims of this study are to determine 1) whether a mass-segregated core survives the gas expulsion and 2) the probable location of any…
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…
We summarize some of the results obtained from Herschel surveys of the nearby star forming regions and the Galactic plane. We show that in the nearby star forming regions the starless core spatial surface density distribution is very…
Fluid-mediated interactions between particles in a vibrating fluid lead to both long range attraction and short range repulsion. The resulting patterns include hexagonally ordered micro-crystallites, time-periodic structures, and chaotic…
We perform simulations to test the effects of a moving gas filament on a young star cluster (i.e. the "Slingshot" Model). We model Orion Nebula Cluster-like clusters as Plummer spheres and the Integral Shaped Filament gas as a cylindrical…
Massive stars are predominantly born in stellar associations or clusters. Their radiation fields, stellar winds, and supernovae strongly impact their local environment. In the first few million years of a cluster's life, massive stars are…
The outskirts of galaxies offer extreme environments where we can test our understanding of the formation, evolution, and destruction of molecules and their relationship with star formation and galaxy evolution. We review the basic…
Collisions between centimeter- to decimeter-sized dusty bodies are important to understand the mechanisms leading to the formation of planetesimals. We thus performed laboratory experiments to study the collisional behavior of dust…
Early-type galaxies possess a dilute hot (2-10E6 K) gas that is probably the thermalized ejecta of the mass loss from evolving stars. We investigate the processes by which the mass loss from orbiting stars interacts with the stationary hot…
In certain mass ranges, massive stars can undergo a violent pulsation triggered by the electron/positron pair instability that ejects matter, but does not totally disrupt the star. After one or more of these pulsations, such stars are…
Massive stars are mainly found in stellar associations. These massive star clusters occur in the heart of giant molecular clouds. The strong stellar wind activity in these objects generates large bubbles and induces collective effects that…
We consider spherical stellar clusters with a broad mass function and a relaxation time short enough so that the segregation of massive stars toward the centre occurs before they have time to evolve off the main sequence. The relaxational…