Related papers: Open clusters in a dispersing molecular cloud
Recent observations have revealed a variety of young star clusters, including embedded systems, young massive clusters, and associations. We study the formation and dynamical evolution of these clusters using a combination of simulations…
Most stars do not form in isolation but as part of a cluster comprising anywhere between a few dozen to several million stars with stellar densities ranging from 0.01 to several 10$^5$ \Msun pc$^{-3}$. The majority of these clusters…
Stars in star clusters are thought to form in a single burst from a common progenitor cloud of molecular gas. However, massive, old globular clusters -- with ages greater than 10 billion years and masses of several hundred thousand solar…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of star clusters during their formation, assuming that they are born from a turbulent starless clump of a given mass that is embedded within a parent self-gravitating molecular cloud characterized by a…
In about 40% of the Local Group galaxies star clusters have been detected so far, but the census is still incomplete. The properties of these clusters are briefly reviewed, and the impact of galaxy environment on the evolution and survival…
The evolution of star clusters is studied using N-body simulations in which the evolution of single stars and binaries are taken self-consistently into account. Initial conditions are chosen to represent relatively young Galactic open…
Most formation scenarios of globular clusters assume a molecular cloud as the progenitor of the stellar system. However, it is still unclear, how this cloud is transformed into a star cluster, i.e. how the destructive processes related to…
Stellar clusters form by gravitational collapse of turbulent molecular clouds, with up to several thousand stars per cluster. They are thought to be the birthplace of most stars and therefore play an important role in our understanding of…
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…
The solar system was most likely born in a star cluster containing at least 1000 stars. It is highly probable that this cluster environment influenced various properties of the solar system like its chemical composition, size and the…
Protostars and young stars are strongly spatially "clustered" or "correlated" within their natal giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We demonstrate that such clustering leads to the conclusion that the incident bolometric radiative flux upon a…
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…
Mergers of gas-rich galaxies lead to gravitationally driven increases in gas pressure that can trigger intense bursts of star and cluster formation. Although star formation itself is clustered, most newborn stellar aggregates are unbound…
Studies of evolved massive stars indicate that they form in a clustered mode. During the earliest evolutionary stages, these regions are embedded within their natal cores. Here, we show high-spatial-resolution interferometric dust continuum…
Clusters are the dense inner regions of a wide-spread hierarchy of young stellar structures. They often reveal a continuation of this hierarchy inside of them, to smaller scales, when they are young, but orbital mixing eventually erases…
How starburst clusters form out of molecular clouds is still an open question. In this article, I highlight some of the key constraints in this regard, that one can get from the dynamical evolutionary properties of dense stellar systems. I…
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…
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…
Observations and theory both suggest that star clusters form sub-virial (cool) with highly sub-structured distributions. We perform a large ensemble of N-body simulations of moderate-sized (N=1000) cool, fractal clusters to investigate…
It is often argued that young stellar clusters suffer a significant infant mortality that is partly related to the expulsion of dust and gas in their early phases caused by radiation pressure from hot stars and supernovae. Near-infrared…