Related papers: Compact Objects in Globular Clusters
For several decades, globular clusters have been considered the best example of simple stellar populations, hosting coeval and chemical homogeneous stars. The last decade of spectroscopic and photometric studies has revealed a more complex…
The discovery of planets around PSR~1257+12 suggests that planetary systems may be detected around the recycled pulsars found in globular clusters. Planetary systems in dense clusters have lifetimes to disruption due to perturbations by…
We test the hypothesis that globular clusters form in supergiant molecular clouds within high-redshift galaxies. Numerical simulations demonstrate that such large, dense, and cold gas clouds assemble naturally in current hierarchical models…
Gravitational interactions in rich clusters can strip material from the outer parts of galaxies or even completely disrupt entire systems, giving rise to large scale, low surface brightness ghostly features stretching across intergalactic…
Around the turn of the last century, star clusters of all kinds were considered "simple" stellar populations. Over the past decade, this situation has changed dramatically. At the same time, star clusters are among the brightest stellar…
Globular clusters (GCs) are among the oldest and most luminous stellar systems in the Universe, offering unique insights into galaxy formation and evolution. While the physical processes behind their origin have long remained elusive, major…
Dwarf galaxies have attracted increased attention in recent years, because of their susceptibility to galaxy transformation processes within rich galaxy clusters. Direct evidence for these processes, however, has been difficult to obtain,…
Based on the earlier work of Gunn and McCrea we model the formation of globular clusters in merging galaxies. Neutral hydrogen observations of dwarf irregular galaxies as well as more luminous systems are used to provide the key parameters…
Star clusters - open and globulars - experience dynamical evolution on time scales shorter than their age. Consequently, open and globular clusters provide us with unique dynamical laboratories for learning about two-body relaxation, mass…
We analyze the distinguishability of populations of coalescing binary neutron stars, neutron-star black-hole binaries, and binary black holes, whose gravitational-wave signatures are expected to be observed by the advanced network of…
Correlations among the independently measured physical properties of globular clusters (GCs) can provide powerful tests for theoretical models and new insights into their dynamics, formation, and evolution. We review briefly some of the…
Galaxy clusters can play a key role in modern cosmology provided their evolution is properly understood. However, observed clusters give us only a single timeframe of their dynamical state. Therefore, finding present observable data of…
We study the impact of young clusters on the gravitational wave background from compact binary coalescence. We simulate a catalog of sources from population I/II isolated binary stars and stars born in young clusters, corresponding to one…
The features and make up of the population of X-ray sources in Galactic star clusters reflect the properties of the underlying stellar environment. Cluster age, mass, stellar encounter rate, binary frequency, metallicity, and maybe other…
The Galactic Center hosts the densest known stellar environment in the Milky Way, dominated by the massive black hole Sgr A* and the surrounding nuclear star cluster. Theory predicts that this region should also contain a large population…
The predicted rate of binary black hole mergers from galactic fields can vary over several orders of magnitude and is extremely sensitive to the assumptions of stellar evolution. But in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters,…
Our 2dF Fornax Cluster Spectroscopic Survey (FCSS) and follow-up work in the Virgo Cluster have shown that the cores of both galaxy clusters contain a previously-unknown class of object, ultra-compact dwarf (UCD) galaxies. We present high…
Numerical and observational evidence suggests that massive white dwarfs dominate the innermost regions of core-collapsed globular clusters by both number and total mass. Using NGC 6397 as a test case, we constrain the features of white…
Although globular clusters are generally chemically homogeneous, substantial abundance variations are sometimes seen even among unevolved main sequence stars, especially for the CNO group of elements. Multi-object intermediate-dispersion…
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…