Related papers: Computational Methods for Collisional Stellar Syst…
Globular clusters (GCs) constitute a system which is evolving because of various interactions with the galactic environment. Evolution may be the explanation of many observed features of Globular Cluster Systems (GCSs); the different radial…
Runaway stellar collisions in dense star clusters are invoked to explain the presence of very massive stars or blue stragglers in the center of those systems. This process has also been explored for the first star clusters in the Universe…
The evolution of dense star clusters is followed by direct high-accuracy N-body simulation. The problem is to first order a gravitational N-body problem, but stars evolve due to astrophysics and the more massive ones form black holes or…
Two-body relaxation times of nuclear star clusters are short enough that gravitational encounters should substantially affect their structure in 10 Gyr or less. In nuclear star clusters without massive black holes, dynamical evolution is a…
In young star clusters, the density can be high enough and the velocity dispersion low enough for stars to collide and merge with a significant probability. This has been suggested as a possible way to build up the high-mass portion of the…
The dynamics of galactic nuclei can be affected by several mechanisms. Among these are stellar evolution, stellar collisions, mass segregation, and tidal disruptions of stars due to the central black hole. In this presentation I will…
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…
We review possible dynamical formation processes for central massive black holes in dense star clusters. We focus on the early dynamical evolution of young clusters containing a few thousand to a few million stars. One natural formation…
Most stars form in dense star clusters deeply embedded in residual gas. These objects must therefore be seen as the fundamental building blocks of galaxies. With this contribution some physical processes that act in the very early and also…
The evolution of star clusters is determined by several internal and external processes. Here we focus on two dominant internal effects, namely energy exchange between stars through close encounters (two-body relaxation) and mass-loss of…
Globular clusters were thought to be simple stellar populations, but recent photometric and spectroscopic evidence suggests that the clusters' early formation history was more complicated. In particular, clusters show star-to-star abundance…
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 apply the idea that dense stellar systems in the central region of galaxies are formed via globular cluster mergers to the formation of the nuclear star cluster of the Milky Way, where a massive black hole is present. Our high precision…
Most stars are born in dense stellar environments where the formation and early evolution of planetary systems may be significantly perturbed by encounters with neighbouring stars. To investigate on the fate of circumstellar gas disks and…
The evolution of galaxies is driven strongly by dynamical processes including internal instabilities, tidal interactions and mergers. The cluster environment is a useful laboratory for studying these effects. I present recent results on…
Dynamics of stellar orbits in dense stellar systems and nuclear star clusters (NSC) with an embedded supermassive black hole (SMBH) is governed a complex interplay of different forces. In particular, star--star gravitational collisions…
Galactic nuclei and globular clusters act as laboratories in which nature experiments with normal stars, neutron stars and black holes, through collisions and through the formation of bound states, in the form of binaries. The main…
We present preliminary results of the application of a new sophisticated code which allows high precision integration of orbits of stars belonging to a dense stellar system moving in the vicinity of a massive black hole. This mimics the…
The long-term evolution of stellar orbits bound to a massive centre is studied in order to understand the cores of star clusters in central regions of galaxies. Stellar trajectories undergo tiny perturbation, the origin of which is twofold:…
(Abridged) The formation and evolution of star cluster populations are related to the galactic environment. Cluster formation is governed by processes acting on galactic scales, and star cluster disruption is driven by the tidal field. In…