The formation, disruption and properties of pressure-supported stellar systems and implications for the astrophysics of galaxies
arXiv:0712.2818 · doi:10.1017/S1743921308015202
Abstract
Most stars form in dense star clusters deeply embedded in residual gas. These objects must therefore be seen as the fundamental building blocks of galaxies. With this contribution some physical processes that act in the very early and also later dynamical evolution of dense stellar systems in terms of shaping their later appearance and properties, and the impact they have on their host galaxies, are highlighted. Considering dense systems with increasing mass, it turns out that near 10^6 Msol their properties change fundamentally: stellar populations become complex, a galaxial mass--radius relation emerges and the median two-body relaxation time becomes longer than a Hubble time. Intriguingly, only systems with a two-body relaxation time longer than a Hubble time show weak evidence for dark matter, whereby dSph galaxies form total outliers.
arXiv comment10 pages, to appear in IAUS246: Dynamical Evolution of Dense Stellar Systems, eds: E. Vesperini, M. Giersz, A. Sills
References in corpus (44)
- Embedded Clusters in Molecular Clouds
- The Initial Mass Function of Stars: Evidence for Uniformity in Variable Systems
- Control of star formation by supersonic turbulence
- Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation
- Dynamical evolution of star clusters in tidal fields
- Slow Star Formation in Dense Gas: Evidence and Implications
- Star Formation in a Crossing Time
- Galactic-Field IMFs of Massive Stars
- The Formation of a Bound Star Cluster: From the Orion Nebula Cluster to the Pleiades
- Gas expulsion and the destruction of massive young clusters
- Star cluster ecology IVa: Dissection of an open star cluster---photometry
- The extended tails of Palomar 5: A ten degree arc of globular cluster tidal debris
- The maximum stellar mass, star-cluster formation and composite stellar populations
- An upper limit to the masses of stars
- Evidence for the Strong Effect of Gas Removal on the Internal Dynamics of Young Stellar Clusters
- Evidence for a fundamental stellar upper mass limit from clustered star formation
- On the mass function of star clusters
- The Variation of Integrated Star IMFs among Galaxies
- Implications for the formation of star clusters from extra-galactic star-formation rates
- Effects of the Equation of State on the Formation of Star Clusters
- The Formation of Stellar Clusters in Turbulent Molecular Clouds: Effects of the Equation of State
- Photoionising feedback in star cluster formation
- The Initial Configuration of Young Stellar Clusters: A K-band Number Counts Analysis of the Surface Density of Stars
- A dynamical origin for early mass segregation in young star clusters
- Thickening of galactic disks through clustered star formation
- Statistical Confirmation of a Stellar Upper Mass Limit
- Comments on Inferences of Star Formation Histories and Birthlines
- Do O-stars form in isolation?
- The dynamical evolution of stellar super-clusters
- A highly abnormal massive star mass function in the Orion Nebula cluster and the dynamical decay of trapezia systems
- Mass Segregation in Young Magellanic Clouds Star Clusters: Four Clusters observed with HST
- Star formation in unbound giant molecular clouds: the origin of OB associations?
- Evolution of the mass function of the Galactic globular cluster system
- Evolution of globular cluster systems in elliptical galaxies. II. Power-law initial mass function
- Evolution of globular cluster systems in elliptical galaxies. I. Log-normal initial mass function
- Star formation in clusters: early sub-clustering in the Serpens core
- Chain Galaxies in the Tadpole ACS Field
- The Origin of the Gaussian Initial Mass Function of Old Globular Cluster Systems
- Star Cluster Survival in Star Cluster Complexes under Extreme Residual Gas Expulsion
- New Light on the Initial Mass Function of the Galactic Halo Globular Clusters
- On the infant weight loss of low- to intermediate-mass star clusters
- Captured older stars as the reason for apparently prolonged star formation in young star clusters
- Clustered Star Formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud. A Spitzer/IRAC View of the Star-Forming Region NGC 602/N 90
- Complex stellar populations in massive clusters: trapping stars of a dwarf-disc galaxy in a newborn stellar super-cluster