Related papers: From nuclear clusters to halo globulars: Star clus…
Globular cluster systems exhibit a bewildering variety of characteristics. No single scenario appears to be able to account for the wide range of specific globular cluster frequencies that are observed in galaxies of various types. The…
I present recent observations and analyses of star cluster formation in a wide variety of environments -- from young star clusters and super star clusters in normal actively star-forming spirals and irregulars to starbursting dwarfs and…
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…
Typical globular clusters (GCs - young and old) host stellar populations with little or no star-to-star variations in heavy elements (e.g., Ca, Fe) nor in age. Nuclear star clusters (NSCs), on the other hand, host complex stellar…
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…
Mergers of massive gas-rich galaxies trigger violent starbursts that - over timescales of $> 100$ Myr and regions $> 10$ kpc - form massive and compact star clusters comparable in mass and radii to Galactic globular clusters. The star…
Young clusters are observed to form in a variety of interacting galaxies and violent starbursts, a substantial number resembling the progenitors of the well-studied globular clusters in mass and size. By studying young clusters in merger…
Globular Cluster (GC) formation seems to be a widespread mode of star formation in extreme starbursts triggered by strong interactions and mergers of massive gas-rich galaxies. We use our detailed chemically consistent evolutionary…
Gravitationally-bound clusters that survive gas removal represent an unusual mode of star formation in the Milky Way and similar spiral galaxies. While forming, they can be distinguished observationally from unbound star formation by their…
We discuss some of the key open questions regarding the formation and evolution of globular clusters (GCs) during galaxy formation and assembly within a cosmological framework. The current state-of-the-art for both observations and…
Star formation in starbursts appears to be biased toward compact clusters, with up to 20% of all stars formed in them. Observations with HST show that many of these clusters have luminosities (-9 > Mv > -16), UBVI colors, and half-light…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
We present an end-to-end description of the formation process of globular clusters (GCs) which combines a treatment for their formation and dynamical evolution within galaxy haloes with a state-of-the-art semi-analytic simulation of galaxy…
Galactic nuclei often harbor a disproportionately large amount of star formation activity with respect to their surrounding disks. Not coincidentally, the density of molecular material in galactic nuclei is often also much greater than that…
Star clusters have hierarchical patterns in space and time, suggesting formation processes in the densest regions of a turbulent interstellar medium. Clusters also have hierarchical substructure when they are young, which makes them all…
I briefly review some measures of star formation rates in galaxies and discuss their respective uncertainties before outlining the range of star formation rates encountered in starbursts from isolated dwarf through massive gas-rich…
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…
Galactic globular clusters are ancient building blocks of our Galaxy. They represent a very interesting family of stellar systems in which some fundamental dynamical processes have been taking place for more than 10 Gyr, but on time scales…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
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…