Related papers: On encounter rates in star clusters
Observations and cosmological simulations indicate that the early Universe hosted numerous compact, high-density stellar systems, where close encounters and physical collisions between stars were likely common. We develop a bottom-up…
Planet formation is generally described in terms of a system containing the host star and a protoplanetary disc, of which the internal properties (e.g. mass and metallicity) determine the properties of the resulting planetary system.…
Star formation is triggered in essentially three ways: (1) the pressures from existing stars collect and squeeze nearby dense gas into gravitationally unstable configurations, (2) random compression from supersonic turbulence makes new…
Stars predominantly form in compact, non-hierarchical clusters. The gas outflows ejected by protostars can intersect and interact with each other, resulting in complex interactions that affect the dynamics, morphology, and evolution of…
Star formation plays a central role in the evolution of galaxies and of the Universe as a whole. Studies of star-forming regions in the local universe have shown that star formation typically occurs in a clustered fashion. Building a…
There is much debate on how high-mass star formation varies with environment, and whether the sparsest star-forming environments are capable of forming massive stars. To address this issue, we have observed eight apparently isolated OB…
We investigate the formation of both clustered and distributed populations of young stars in a single molecular cloud. We present a numerical simulation of a 10,000 solar mass elongated, turbulent, molecular cloud and the formation of over…
The discovery of Exoplanetary Systems has challenged some of the theories of planet formation, which assume unperturbed evolution of the host star and its planets. However, in star clusters the interactions with flyby stars and binaries may…
We simulate the dynamics of fractal star clusters, in order to investigate the evolution of substructure in recently formed clusters. The velocity dispersion is found to be the key parameter determining the survival of substructure. In…
A sample of hundreds of simulated galaxy clusters is used to study the statistical properties of galaxy cluster formation. Individual assembly histories are discussed, the degree of virialization is demonstrated and various commonly used…
Observations and theory both suggest that star clusters form sub-virial (cool) with highly sub-structured distributions. We perform a large ensemble of N-body simulations of moderate-sized (N=1000) cool, fractal clusters to investigate…
The effect of galaxy interactions on star formation has been investigated using Data Release 1 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Both the imaging and spectroscopy data products have been used to construct a catalogue of nearest…
We model the dynamics of test binaries in isotropic, multi-mass models of galactic globular clusters. The evolution of binary orbits through the cluster potentials is modeled, including second order diffusion terms, and probabilities for…
After the stars of a new, embedded star cluster have formed they blow the remaining gas out of the cluster. Especially winds of massive stars and definitely the on-set of the first supernovae can remove the residual gas from a cluster. This…
The HST data archive contains images of several nearby spirals, suitable for detailed studies of the properties of individual star clusters and their surroundings. By combining structural information derived from HST images with…
Recently, very massive compact stellar systems have been discovered in the intracluster regions of galaxy clusters and in the nuclear regions of late-type disk galaxies. It is unclear how these compact stellar systems -- known as…
We perform high resolution simulations of forming star clusters as they merge inside giant molecular clouds (GMCs) using hydrodynamics coupled to N-body dynamics to simultaneously model both the gas and stars. We zoom in to previously run…
Recent observations show that small, young, stellar groupings of ~10 to 40 members tend of have a centrally-located most massive member, reminiscent of mass segregation seen in large clustered systems. Here, we analyze hydrodynamic…
Only star clusters that are sufficiently compact and massive survive largely unharmed beyond 10 Myr. However, their compactness means a high stellar density which can lead to strong gravitational interactions between the stars. As young…
Most, if not all, young stars are initially surrounded by protoplanetary disks. Owing to the preferential formation of stars in stellar clusters, the protoplanetary disks around these stars may potentially be affected by the cluster…