Self-enrichment in globular clusters. I. An analytic approach

Abstract

By means of analytical calculations, we explore the self-enrichment scenario for Globular Cluster formation. According to this scenario, an initial burst of star formation occurs inside the core radius of the initial gaseous distribution. The outward-propagating shock wave sweeps up a shell in which gravitational instabilities may arise, leading to the formation of a second, metal-enriched, population of stars. We find a minimum mass of the proto-globular cluster of the order of 10^6 solar masses. We also find that the observed spread in the Magnitude-Metallicity relation can be explained assuming cluster-to-cluster variations of some parameters like the thermalization efficiency, the mixing efficiency and the Initial Mass Function, as well as variations of the external pressure.

12 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

Cited by in corpus (20)

• The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. VI. The Nuclei of Early-Type Galaxies in the Fornax Cluster
• Population Parameters of Intermediate-Age Star Clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud. I. NGC 1846 and its Wide Main Sequence Turnoff
• Recurrent gas accretion by massive star clusters, multiple stellar populations and mass thresholds for spherical stellar systems
• Stochastic self-enrichment, pre-enrichment, and the formation of globular clusters
• The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. IX. The Color-Magnitude Relation of Globular Cluster Systems
• On The Origin of the Blue Tilt in Extragalactic Globular Cluster Systems
• The Chemical Evolution of Globular Clusters I. Reactive Elements and Non-Metals
• The fragmentation of expanding shells I: Limitations of the thin--shell approximation
• Extremely alpha-Enriched Globular Clusters in Early-Type Galaxies: A Step towards the Dawn of Stellar Populations?
• VLT Spectroscopy of Globular Clusters in Low Surface Brightness Dwarf Galaxies
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation of Globular Clusters in the Context of Nonlinear Color-Metallicty Relations
• Formation of new stellar populations from gas accreted by massive young star clusters
• On the internal pollution mechanisms in the globular cluster NGC 6121 (M4): heavy-element abundances and AGB models
• The Formation of Globular Cluster Systems in Massive Elliptical Galaxies: Globular Cluster Multimodality from Radial Variation of Stellar Populations
• Primordial pollution of globular clusters within their host dwarfs embedded in dark matter halos at high redshifts
• Color-Magnitude Relations within Globular Cluster Systems of Giant Elliptical Galaxies: The Effects of Globular Cluster Mass Loss and the Stellar Initial Mass Function
• On the efficiency of field star capture by star clusters
• Formation of Compact Stellar Clusters by High-Redshift Galaxy Outflows III: Observability and Connection to Halo Globular Clusters
• Core collapse and horizontal-branch morphology in galactic globular clusters
• Globular Cluster formation in a collapsing supershell