The universality hypothesis: binary and stellar populations in star clusters and galaxies

Abstract

It is possible to extract, from the observations, distribution functions of the birth dynamical properties of a stellar population, and to also infer that these are quite invariant to the physical conditions of star formation. The most famous example is the stellar IMF, and the initial binary population (IBP) seems to follow suit. A compact mathematical formulation of the IBP can be derived from the data. It has three broad parts: the IBP of the dominant stellar population (0.08-2 M_sol), the IBP of the more-massive stars and the IBP of brown dwarfs. These three mass regimes correspond to different physical regimes of star formation but not to structure in the IMF. With this formulation of the IBP it becomes possible to synthesise the stellar-population of whole galaxies.

9 pages, 3 figures, invited review to appear in the proceeding sof IAUS 270 on Computational Star Formation, eds: J. Alves, B. Elmegreen, J. Girart, V. Trimble

References in corpus (4)

• Dense Stellar Populations: Initial Conditions
• The Evolution of the Multiplicity of Embedded Protostars II: Binary Separation Distribution & Analysis
• Tidally induced brown dwarf and planet formation in circumstellar discs
• A discontinuity in the low-mass IMF - the case of high multiplicity

Cited by in corpus (14)

• The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations
• MOCCA-SURVEY Database I. Unravelling black hole subsystems in globular clusters
• An analytical description of the evolution of binary orbital-parameter distributions in N-body computations of star clusters
• The possible role of stellar mergers for the formation of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters
• On the initial binary population for star cluster simulations
• MOCCA-SURVEY database I. Accreting white dwarf binary systems in globular clusters -- IV. cataclysmic variables -- properties of bright and faint populations
• MOCCA Survey Database I: Dissolution of tidally filling star clusters harbouring BH subsystems
• The initial period function of late-type binary stars and its variation
• MOCCA-SURVEY database I. Accreting white dwarf binary systems in globular clusters -- I. cataclysmic variables -- present-day population
• The crucial role of higher-order multiplicity in wide binary formation: A case study using the $\beta$-Pictoris moving group
• The Binary Fraction and Mass Segregation in Alpha Persei Open Cluster
• MOCCA: Dynamics and evolution of binary stars of multiple stellar populations in tidally filling and underfilling globular star clusters
• Dynamical equivalence, the origin of the Galactic field stellar and binary population, and the initial radius--mass relation of embedded clusters
• BiPoS1 -- a computer programme for the dynamical processing of the initial binary star population