Related papers: Dissolution of Globular Clusters
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
Low-mass cluster galaxies are the most common galaxy type in the universe and are at a cornerstone of our understanding of galaxy formation, cluster luminosity functions, dark matter and the formation of large scale structure. I describe in…
Globular clusters are ancient stellar populations with no star formation or core-collapse supernovae. Several lines of evidence suggest that globular clusters are rich in planets. If so, and if advanced civilizations can develop there, then…
Violent relaxation -- the protocluster dynamical response to the expulsion of its residual star forming gas -- is a short albeit crucial episode in the evolution of star clusters and star cluster systems. Because it is heavily driven by…
Globular clusters have long been known to contain large excesses of a variety of objects formed through dynamical processes. The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in our knowledge about these systems.
Observations of the dust and gas around embedded stellar clusters reveal some of the processes involved in their formation and evolution. Large scale mass infall with rates dM/dt=4e-4 solar masses/year is found to be disrupted on small…
We present a high-resolution simulation of globular cluster formation in a galaxy merger. For the first time in such a simulation, individual star clusters are directly identified and followed on their orbits. We quantitatively compare star…
Modern hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation are able to predict accurately the rates and locations of the assembly of giant molecular clouds in early galaxies. These clouds could host star clusters with the masses and sizes of real…
Galaxies in clusters are gas-deficient and a number of possible explanations for this observation have been advanced, including galaxy-cluster tidal interactions, galaxy harassment, and ISM-ICM gas stripping. In this paper, we use a…
Populations of young star clusters show significant differences even among "normal" disk galaxies. In this contribution I discuss how properties of young cluster systems are related to those of their host galaxies, based on a recent study…
In this contribution I present a review of star formation in clusters. I begin by discussing the various definitions of what constitutes a star cluster, and then compare the outcome of star formation (IMF, multiplicity, mass segregation and…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
This conference demonstrated the tremendous progress that has been made in the last decade in our observational and theoretical understanding of compact, young, massive star clusters. One of the Hubble Space Telescope's main achievements…
Galactic globular clusters are old, dense star systems typically containing 10\super{4}--10\super{7} stars. As an old population of stars, globular clusters contain many collapsed and degenerate objects. As a dense population of stars,…
The young star clusters we observe today are the building blocks of a new generation of stars and planets in our Galaxy and beyond. Despite their fundamental role we still lack knowledge about the conditions under which star clusters form…
Traditional studies of stellar clusters in external galaxies use surface photometry and therefore focus on systems that are still bright and compact enough to be separated from the stellar background. Consequently, the latter stages of…
Various cosmological applications of galaxy clusters are presented. Clusters are used to determine the baryon fraction, dark matter distribution and the matter density of the universe. They also contain a wealth of information about…
There is compelling observational evidence that globular clusters (GCs) are quite complex objects. A growing body of photometric results indicate that the evolutionary sequences are not simply isochrones in the observational plane -as…
Using our recently improved understanding of star cluster physics, we are now within reach of answering a number of fundamental questions in contemporary astrophysics. Star cluster physics has immediate bearing on questions ranging from the…
Dynamical friction and tidal disruption are effective mechanisms of evolution of globular cluster systems, especially in non-axysimmetric galaxies with a central compact nucleus. With a semi-analytical approach based on the knowledge of the…