Related papers: Hierarchical Formation of Galactic Clusters
Over the past years observations of young and populous star clusters have shown that the stellar IMF appears to be an invariant featureless Salpeter power-law with an exponent alpha=2.35 for stars more massive than a few Msun. A consensus…
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…
It is widely believed that structure in the Universe evolves hierarchically, as primordial density fluctuations, amplified by gravity, collapse and merge to form progressively larger systems. The structure and evolution of X-ray clusters,…
Hierarchical structure in young star fields has been demonstrated in a variety of ways, including two point correlation functions (TPCFs) that are power laws for spatial scales up to at least several hundred parsecs. As the stars age, this…
Using ground-based UBVRI+Halpha CCD photometry we have been carrying out a search for young massive star clusters (YMCs) in a sample consisting of 21 nearby spiral galaxies. We find a large variety concerning the richness of the cluster…
At which masses does the regime of globular clusters end and the one of dwarf galaxies begin? And what separates these two classes of hot stellar systems? We examine to what extend very massive (>10^7 Mo) young star clusters are similar to…
Numerical simulations of a Milky Way-size galaxy demonstrate that globular clusters with the properties similar to observed can form naturally at z > 3 in the concordance Lambda-CDM cosmology. The clusters in our model form in the strongly…
Accumulation of new data on stellar hierarchical systems and the progress in numerical simulations of their formation open the door to genetic classification of these systems, where properties of a certain group (family) of objects are…
Stars form predominantly in groups usually denoted as clusters or associations. The observed stellar groups display a broad spectrum of masses, sizes and other properties, so it is often assumed that there is no underlying structure in this…
This article reviews some recent studies of the mass, age, and space distributions of star clusters, with a primary focus on the large population of clusters in the interacting Antennae galaxies. Some of the highlights of these studies are…
Star clusters are known to be formed in turbulent molecular clouds. How turbulence is driven in molecular clouds and what effect this has on star formation is still unclear. We compare a simulation setup with turbulent driving everywhere in…
This review focuses on how galaxies and their globular cluster systems form. I first discuss the now fairly convincing evidence that some globular clusters form in galaxy starbursts/mergers. One way these observations are valuable is they…
New models are presented for star-forming condensations in clusters. In each model, the condensation mass increases linearly with radius on small scales, and more rapidly on large scales, as in "thermal-nonthermal" models. Spherical…
Globular clusters provide a unique probe of galaxy formation and evolution. Here I briefly summarize the known observational properties of globular cluster systems. One re-occurring theme is that the globular cluster systems of spirals and…
In hierarchical cosmologies the evolution of galaxy clustering depends both on cosmological quantities such as Omega and Lambda, which determine how dark matter halos form and evolve, and on the physical processes - cooling, star formation…
The currently available empirical evidence on the star formation processes in the extreme, high-pressure environments induced by galaxy encounters, mostly based on high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging observations, strongly…
Young, massive star clusters are the most notable and significant end products of violent star-forming episodes triggered by galaxy collisions, mergers, and close encounters. Their contribution to the total luminosity induced by such…
An objective prism H alpha survey has shown that there is a population of early type spiral galaxies in nearby clusters with strong central bursts of star formation which could be due to galaxy--galaxy tidal interactions. Such galaxies are…
Observations indicate that young massive star clusters in spiral and dwarf galaxies follow a relation between luminosity of the brightest young cluster and the star-formation rate (SFR) of the host galaxy, in the sense that higher SFRs lead…
We show that dynamical evolution in a strong (Galactic Centre-like) tidal field can create clusters that would appear to have very top-heavy IMFs. The tidal disruption of single star forming events can leave several bound `clusters' spread…