Related papers: Mass Segregation in Star Clusters: Analytic Estima…
In the first part of this article, we review observations of the mass and luminosity functions of young and old star cluster systems. We also review some of the physical processes that may determine the characteristic mass of globular…
Most if not all stars form in star clusters. Thus the distribution of star clusters preserves the information on the star formation history of a galaxy. Massive clusters form only during episodes of high star formation activity whereas…
The mass distribution of galaxy clusters can be determined from the study of the projected phase-space distribution of cluster galaxies. The main advantage of this method as compared to others, is that it allows determination of cluster…
In many different galactic environments the cluster initial mass function (CIMF) is well described by a power-law with index -2. This implies a linear relation between the mass of the most massive cluster (M_max) and the number of clusters.…
The mass assembly in star forming regions arises from the hierarchical structure in molecular clouds in tandem with fragmentation at different scales. In this paper, we present a study of the fragmentation of massive clumps covering a range…
In many theoretical scenarios it is expected that intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs, with masses M ~ 100-10000 solar masses) reside at the centers of some globular clusters. However, observational evidence for their existence is limited.…
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…
In this paper, using 2MASS photometry, we study the mass functions $\phi(M) = dN/dM \propto M^{-\alpha}$ of a sample of nine clusters of ages varying from 4 Myr--1.2 Gyr and Galactocentric distances from 6--12 kpc. We look for evidence of…
Most stars do not form in isolation but as part of a cluster comprising anywhere between a few dozen to several million stars with stellar densities ranging from 0.01 to several 10$^5$ \Msun pc$^{-3}$. The majority of these clusters…
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 observations of bulge/disk segregation in the Universe are reviewed with a focus on whether the observed segregation in clusters is local or global, and whether there is bulge-disk segregation on large-scales. The high concentration of…
Most star complexes are in fact complexes of stars, clusters and gas clouds; term "star complexes" was introduced as general one disregarding the preferential content of a complex. Generally the high rate of star formation in a complex is…
The presence of multiple luminous galaxies in clusters can be explained by the finite time over which a galaxy sinks to the center of the cluster and merges with the the central galaxy. The simplest measurable statistic to quantify the…
Close encounters and physical collisions between stars in young dense clusters can result in new channels for stellar evolution, and may lead to the formation of very massive stars and black holes via runaway merging. We present some…
Close encounters and physical collisions between stars in young dense clusters may lead to the formation of very massive stars and black holes via runaway merging. We examine critically some details of this process, using N-body simulations…
We present, for the first time, a clear $N$-body realization of the {\it strong mass segregation} solution for the stellar distribution around a massive black hole. We compare our $N$-body results with those obtained by solving the…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. As these clusters typically contain more mass in gas than in stars, accretion can play an important role in determining the final stellar masses. Numerical simulations of gas…
Whether intermediate-mass black holes reside in nearby star clusters has remained contested for decades. We address this question by training neural network and random forest regressors on synthetic catalogs generated with the {\sc Rapster}…
The central regions of galaxies show the presence of massive black holes and/or dense stellar systems. The question about their modes of formation is still under debate. A likely explanation of the formation of the central dense stellar…
Quantifying the timescales of star cluster emergence from their natal clouds remains one of the main challenges in understanding the star formation process. These timescales are fundamental measurements of the star formation cycle within…