Related papers: The Initial Mass Function in the Galactic Center
Young massive stars or clusters are often observed at the peripheries of HII regions. What triggers star formation at such locations? Among the scenarios that have been proposed, the `collect and collapse' process is particularly attractive…
We test whether the masses of old globular clusters (GCs) in dwarf galaxies are consistent with the same initial mass spectrum as young massive clusters (YMCs) in nearby star-forming galaxies. The most massive GCs of dwarf galaxies are…
Super-massive black holes, with masses larger than a million times that of the Sun, appear to inhabit the centers of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically-motivated theories of galaxy formation need feedback from these super-massive black…
An anomalous gamma-ray excess emission has been found in Fermi Large Area Telescope data covering the centre of the Galaxy. Several theories have been proposed for this `Galactic Centre Excess'. They include self-annihilation of dark matter…
The Galactic centre stands out as the most prolific star-forming environment of the Galaxy when averaged over volume. In the last 30 million years, it has witnessed the formation of $\sim10^6 M_\odot$ of stars. However, crowding and high…
Of the mechanisms proposed to bring gaseous fuel into the central starburst regions of a galaxy, non-axisymmetries in the gravitational potential set up by interactions or by bars are among the most promising. Nevertheless, direct…
We analyse the cluster luminosity functions (CLFs) of the youngest star clusters in three galaxies exhibiting prominent circumnuclear starburst rings. We focus specifically on NGC 1512 and NGC 6951, for which we have access to H$\alpha$…
We propose that synchronized triggering of star formation in gas-rich galaxies is possible during major mergers of cluster of galaxies, based on new numerical simulations of the time evolution of the physical properties of the intracluster…
The black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy -- the Galactic Black Hole, or GBH -- is a rather modest representative of its class. With a mass of 4 x 10^6 solar masses, it is well over a thousand times less massive than the most…
We present an analysis of the optical spectroscopy of 58 stars in the Galactic plane at $l=27$\arcdeg, where a prominent excess in the flux distribution and star counts have been observed in several spectral regions, in particular in the…
Globular cluster systems exhibit a bewildering variety of characteristics. No single scenario appears to be able to account for the wide range of specific globular cluster frequencies that are observed in galaxies of various types. The…
We use numerical simulation to investigate the triggering of starbursts in merging disk galaxies. The properties of the merger-driven starbursts are sensitive to the structure of the progenitor galaxies; specifically, to the amount of…
We present preliminary results of our \hst Pa$\alpha$ survey of the Galactic Center (\gc), which maps the central 0.65$\times$0.25 degrees around Sgr A*. This survey provides us with a more complete inventory of massive stars within the…
The region bounded by the inner tens of light years at the center of the Milky Way contains five principal components that coexist within the central deep gravitational potential well. These constituents are a black hole candidate (Sgr~A*)…
The mere existence of multiple stellar generations in Milky Way globular clusters indicates that each generation was unable to stop star formation, that instead persisted unimpeded for several million years. This evidence argues for an…
I present here a review on the high energy phenomena occurring in the Galactic Center region, and report in particular on the results obtained from recent X-ray and gamma-ray observations.
Mergers of gas-rich galaxies lead to gravitationally driven increases in gas pressure that can trigger intense bursts of star and cluster formation. Although star formation itself is clustered, most newborn stellar aggregates are unbound…
Supermassive black holes have been discovered at the centers of galaxies, and also in globular clusters. The data shows correlations between the black hole mass and the elliptical galaxy mass or globular cluster mass. It is shown that this…
We investigate the properties of young massive clusters (YMCs) in a galaxy-galaxy merger remnant by analyzing the data obtained by a gas rich major merger simulations in Matsui et al. 2012. We found that the YMCs are distributed at a few…
Context: The earliest stages of high-mass star formation are still poorly characterized. It is also unknown whether the initial conditions vary with environment. Aims: We want to investigate the youngest massive gas clumps in the…