Star Formation in Violent and Normal Evolutionary Phases

Abstract

Mergers of massive gas-rich galaxies trigger violent starbursts that - over timescales of $>100$ Myr and regions $>10$ kpc - form massive and compact star clusters comparable in mass and radii to Galactic globular clusters. The star formation efficiency is higher by 1 - 2 orders of magnitude in these bursts than in undisturbed spirals, irregulars or even BCDs. We ask the question if star formation in these extreme regimes is just a scaled-up version of the normal star formation mode of if the formation of globular clusters reveals fundamentally different conditions.

4 pages To appear in The Evolution of Galaxies. II. Basic building blocks, eds. M. Sauvage, G. Stasinska, L. Vigroux, D. Schaerer, S. Madden

References in corpus (4)

• The Mass Function of Young Star Clusters in the "Antennae" Galaxies
• 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
• Evolution of Globular Clusters Formed in Mergers