Related papers: The time-scale for core collapse in spherical star…
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…
We present results from dynamical Monte Carlo simulations of dense star clusters near the Galactic center. These clusters sink toward the center of the Galaxy by dynamical friction. During their inspiral, they may undergo core collapse and…
Recent observations and hydrodynamical simulations of star formation inside a giant molecular cloud have revealed that, within a star forming region, stars do not form evenly distributed throughout this region, but rather in small…
The collapse of dense cores with different metallicities is studied by hydrodynamical calculations coupled with detailed chemical and radiative processes. For this purpose, we construct a simple chemical network with non-equilibrium…
We report on the discovery of a surprising observed correlation between the slope of the low-mass stellar global mass function (GMF) of globular clusters (GCs) and their central concentration parameter c=log(r_t/r_c), i.e. the logarithmic…
We have run direct N-body simulations to investigate the impact of stellar evolution and dynamics on the structural properties of young massive (3x10^4 solar masses) star clusters (SCs) with different metallicities (Z=1, 0.1, 0.01 solar…
The evolution of tidally truncated globular clusters is investigated by integrating two-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation that allows the development of velocity anisotropy. We start from the isotropic Plummer model with tidal cut off and…
We argue that rich star clusters take at least several local dynamical times to form, and so are quasi-equilibrium structures during their assembly. Observations supporting this conclusion include morphologies of star-forming clumps,…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of compact young clusters (CYCs) near the Galactic center (GC) using Fokker-Planck models. CYCs are very young (< 5 Myr), compact (< 1 pc), and only a few tens of pc away from the GC, while they appear…
Collisional relaxation describes the stochastic process with which a self-gravitating system near equilibrium evolves in phase space due to the fluctuating gravitational field of the system. The characteristic timescale of this process is…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of the Galactic Globular Cluster System in considerably greater detail than has been done hitherto, finding that destruction rates are significantly larger than given by previous estimates. More than…
A fundamental issue in star formation is understanding the precise mechanisms leading to the formation of prestellar cores, and their subsequent gravitationally unstable evolution. To address this question, we carefully construct a suite of…
All gravitationally bound clusters expand, due to both gas loss from their most massive members and binary heating. All are eventually disrupted tidally, either by passing molecular clouds or the gravitational potential of their host…
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…
Several observational and theoretical studies suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) slope for massive stars in globular clusters (GCs) depends on the initial cloud density and metallicity, such that the IMF becomes increasingly…
We investigate the long-term dynamical evolution of two distinct stellar populations of low-mass stars in globular clusters in order to study whether the energy equipartition process can explain the high number of stars harbouring abundance…
We study the evolution of star clusters on circular and eccentric orbits using direct $N$-body simulations. We model clusters with initially $N=8{\rm k}$ and $N=16{\rm k}$ single stars of the same mass, orbiting around a point-mass galaxy.…
We present, for the first time, a clear $N$-body realization of the {\it strong mass segregation} solution for the stellar distribution around a massive black hole. We compare our $N$-body results with those obtained by solving the…
We investigate the accretion of globular cluster stars on early cosmological timescales through detailed N-body simulations of theoretical GC models to assess the role of this mechanism in Milky Way-like galaxies. For the dynamical…