Related papers: Cluster Disruption: Combining Theory and Observati…
How stellar clusters disrupt, and over what timescales, is intimately linked with how they form. Here, we review the theory and observations of cluster disruption, both the suggested initial rapid dissolution phase (infant mortality) and…
Star clusters are often used as tracers of major star formation events in external galaxies as they can be studied up to much larger distances than individual stars. It is vital to understand their evolution if they are used to derive, for…
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…
The observed average lifetime of the population of star clusters in the Solar Neighbourhood, the Small Magellanic Cloud and in selected regions of M51 and M33 is compared with simple theoretical predictions and with the results of N-body…
Star clusters are found in all sorts of environments and their formation and evolution is inextricably linked to the star formation process. Their eventual destruction can result from a number of factors at different times, but the process…
We review many of the basic properties of star cluster systems, and focus in particular on how they relate to their host galaxy properties and ambient environment. The cluster mass and luminosity functions are well approximated by…
Many embedded star clusters do not evolve into long-lived bound clusters. The most popular explanation for this "infant mortality" of young clusters is the expulsion of natal gas by stellar winds and supernovae, which leaves up to 90% of…
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 a framework for understanding the demographics of star cluster systems, and develop a toy model which incorporates a universal initial power law mass function, selected formation histories, selected disruption laws, and a…
The evolution of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds has been the subject of significant recent controversy, particularly regarding the importance and length of the earliest, largely mass-independent disruption phase (referred to as…
The orbital decay and tidal disruption of a star cluster in a galaxy is studied in an analytical manner. Owing to dynamical friction, the star cluster spirals in toward the center of the galaxy. Simultaneously, the galactic tidal field…
The distribution of the number of clusters as a function of mass M and age T suggests that clusters get eroded or dispersed in a regular way over time, such that the cluster number decreases inversely as an approximate power law with T…
We present a new method to derive the cluster disruption time in selected regions of galaxies from the mass or age distribution of magnitude-limited cluster samples. If the disruption time of clusters in a region of a galaxy depends on…
We compare the observed bivariate distribution of masses(M) and ages(t) of star clusters in the LMC with the predicted distributions g(M,t) from 3 idealized models for the disruption of star clusters: (1)sudden mass-dependent…
We review progress in numerical simulations of star cluster formation. These simulations involve the bottom-up assembly of clusters through hierarchical mergers, which produces a fractal stellar distribution at young (~0.5 Myr) ages. The…
In the first part of this article, we review observations of the mass and luminosity functions of young and old star cluster systems. We also review some of the physical processes that may determine the characteristic mass of globular…
We present a simple analytical description of the disruption of star clusters in a tidal field, which agrees excellently with detailed N-body simulations. The analytic expression can be used to predict the mass and age histograms of…
In this work we concentrate on the evolution of the cluster population of the interacting galaxy M51 (NGC 5194), namely the timescale of cluster disruption and possible variations in the cluster formation rate. We present a method to…
Young stars form on a wide range of scales, producing aggregates and clusters with various degrees of gravitational self-binding. The loose aggregates have a hierarchical structure in both space and time that resembles interstellar…
What is the difference between a long-lived unstable (or quasi-stable) multiple star system and a bona fide star cluster? In this paper, we present a possible framework to address this question, by studying the distributions of disruption…