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Related papers: Star cluster disruption by giant molecular clouds

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Dense star clusters expand until their sizes are limited by the tidal field of their host galaxy. During this expansion phase the member stars evolve and lose mass. We show that for clusters with short initial relaxation time scales (<~100…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2012-09-11 Mark Gieles

The age distributions of stellar cluster populations have long been proposed to probe the recent formation history of the host galaxy. However, progress is hampered by the limited understanding of cluster disruption by evaporation and tidal…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-07-19 Meghan Miholics , J. M. Diederik Kruijssen , Alison Sills

We present a simple, self-consistent model to predict the maximum masses of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), stellar clusters and high-redshift clumps as a function of the galactic environment. Recent works have proposed that these maximum…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-05-31 Marta Reina-Campos , J. M. Diederik Kruijssen

Close encounters between stars in star forming regions are important as they can perturb or destroy protoplanetary discs, young planetary systems, and stellar multiple systems. We simulate simple, viralised, equal-mass $N$-body star…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-04-26 Krisada Rawiraswattana , Simon P. Goodwin

We investigate the role of ambipolar diffusion (AD) in collisions between magnetized giant molecular clouds (GMCs), which may be an important mechanism for triggering star cluster formation. Three dimensional simulations of GMC collisions…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-10-18 Duncan Christie , Benjamin Wu , Jonathan C. Tan

Recent radio observations show that the giant molecular cloud (GMC) mass functions noticeably vary across galactic disks. High-resolution magnetohydrodynamics simulations show that multiple episodes of compression are required for creating…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-02-21 Masato I. N. Kobayashi , Shu-ichiro Inutsuka , Hiroshi Kobayashi , Kenji Hasegawa

We study the effect of stellar feedback (photodissociation/ionization, radiation pressure and winds) on the evolution of a Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC), by means of a 3D radiative transfer, hydro-simulation implementing a complex chemical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-07-11 D. Decataldo , A. Lupi , A. Ferrara , A. Pallottini , M. Fumagalli

The properties of young star clusters formed within a galaxy are thought to vary in different interstellar medium (ISM) conditions, but the details of this mapping from galactic to cluster scales are poorly understood due to the large…

Recent observations indicate that the progenitors of globular clusters (GCs) at high redshifts had high average stellar surface densities above $10^5\, \mathrm{M}_\odot\, \mathrm{pc}^{-2}$. The internal structure and kinematics of the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-10 Natalia Lahén , Thorsten Naab , Antti Rantala , Christian Partmann

We investigate the formation of star clusters in an unbound GMC, where the supporting kinetic energy is twice as large as the cloud's self-gravity. This cloud manages to form a series of star clusters and disperse, all within roughly 2…

Astrophysics · Physics 2014-10-13 Paul C. Clark , Ian A. Bonnell , Hans Zinnecker , Matthew R. Bate

We perform a high resolution zoom-in simulation of star cluster assembly including the merger of two sub-clusters with initial conditions taken from previous large scale giant molecular cloud (GMC) simulations. We couple hydrodynamics to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-04 Jeremy Karam , Michiko S. Fujii , Alison Sills

We employ the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE-2) physics model to study how the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) evolve during galaxy mergers. We conduct a pixel-by-pixel analysis of molecular gas properties in both the…

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 self-enrichment of massive star clusters by p-processed elements is shown to increase significantly with increasing gas density as a result of enhanced star formation rates and stellar scatterings compared to the lifetime of a massive…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-02-15 Bruce G. Elmegreen

The physics of star formation and the deposition of mass, momentum, and energy into the interstellar medium by massive stars (`feedback') are the main uncertainties in modern cosmological simulations of galaxy formation and evolution. These…

Young stars form in clusters within molecular clouds, but older stars are evenly distributed across the galactic disk, necessitating an explanation for cluster dissolution. We analytically study tidal forces from cold molecular clouds as a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-13 Xiao-Tong Chen , Guang-Xing Li

Numerical simulations of the dynamical friction suffered by a star cluster near the Galactic center have been performed with a parallelized tree code. Gerhard (2001) has suggested that dynamical friction, which causes a cluster to lose…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Sungsoo S. Kim , Mark Morris

Stellar-mass black holes (BHs) can be retained in globular clusters (GCs) until the present. Simulations of GC evolution find that the relaxation driven mass-loss rate is elevated if BHs are present, especially near dissolution. We capture…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-05-17 Mark Gieles , Oleg Y. Gnedin

The objective of this study is to analytically explore mass loss and gain induced by stellar collisions on a gas-accreting extremely massive star (aEMS, 10^3 <= M/M_sun <= 10^4). We also consider its contribution to the mass budget in the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-06-17 Laura Ramírez-Galeano , Corinne Charbonnel , Tassos Fragos , Zoubaïr Tazakkati , Jaime Roman-Garza , Mark Gieles

Recent observations have demonstrated that giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are short-lived entities, surviving for the order of a dynamical time before turning a few percent of their mass into stars and dispersing, leaving behind an isolated…