Related papers: Young star clusters: Clues to galaxy formation and…
This paper studies the dynamical evolution of young stellar clusters with $N$ = 100 - 1000 members. We use N-body simulations to explore how evolution depends on system size $N$ and the initial conditions. Motivated by recent observations…
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…
Multiple stellar populations are observed in almost all globular-clusters, but the origin of this phenomenon is still debated. We investigate the role cool supergiants may have played. To do this, we combine two investigative methods:…
We investigate the evolution of star-forming gas-rich disks, using a 3D chemodynamical model including a dark halo, stars, and a two-phase interstellar medium with feedback processes from the stars. We show that galaxy evolution proceeds…
Observational and theoretical arguments support the idea that violent events connected with $AGN$ activity and/or intense star forming episodes have played a significant role in the early phases of galaxy formation at high red shifts. Being…
Young stellar associations hold a star formation record that can persist for millions of years, revealing the progression of star formation long after the dispersal of the natal cloud. To identify nearby young stellar populations that trace…
The merger history of a galaxy is thought to be one of the major factors determining its internal dynamics, with galaxies having undergone different types or mergers (e.g. dry, minor or major mergers) predicted to show different dynamical…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
Early-type galaxies are considered to be the end-products of massive galaxy formation. Optical spectroscopic studies reveal that massive early-type galaxies formed the bulk of their stars over short timescales (1<Gyr) and at high redshift…
Most stars form in highly clustered environments within molecular clouds, but eventually disperse into the distributed stellar field population. Exactly how the stellar distribution evolves from the embedded stage into gas-free associations…
[abridged] How does a star cluster of more than few 10,000 solar masses form? We present the case of the cluster NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and its star-forming region N66, and we propose a scenario for its formation, based on…
How starburst clusters form out of molecular clouds is still an open question. In this article, I highlight some of the key constraints in this regard, that one can get from the dynamical evolutionary properties of dense stellar systems. I…
Young star clusters (YSCs) with resolved stellar populations are well suited for studying star-cluster formation. In most cases, the (pre-main-sequence) stellar populations found in the YSCs are coeval with an intrinsic age spread of up to…
Super star clusters are the end product of star formation under the most extreme conditions. As such, studying how their final stellar populations are assembled from their natal progenitor gas clouds can provide strong constraints on star…
The current generation of galaxy simulations can resolve individual giant molecular clouds, the progenitors of dense star clusters. But the evolutionary fate of these young massive clusters, and whether they can become the old globular…
The high stellar densities in young compact star clusters, such as the star cluster R 136 in the 30 Doradus region, may lead to a large number of stellar collisions. Such collisions were recently found to be much more frequent than previous…
A dense-enough gas-accumulation evolves, over a few Myr of intensifying star formation, to an embedded cluster. If it contains a sufficient amount of mass, O stars form and explosively expel the remaining gas, whereas poorer clusters reduce…
Globular clusters are gravitationally bound stellar systems containing on the order of 100,000 stars. Due to the high stellar densities in the cores of these clusters, close encounters and even physical collisions between stars are…
The similarity between the mass and spatial distributions of pre-stellar gas cores in star-forming clouds and young stars in clusters provides strong circumstantial evidence that these gas cores are the direct progenitors of individual…
We present multicolor photometry of bright star cluster candidates in the nearby starburst galaxies NGC 3077 and NGC 5253, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in both broadband (F300W, F547M and F814W)…