The Birth, Evolution and Death of Star Clusters

dc.creatorKroupa, Pavel
dc.date2000-10-19
dc.date2000-10-20
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T01:56:07Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T01:56:07Z
dc.descriptionA dense-enough gas-accumulation evolves, over a few Myr of intensifying star formation, to an embedded cluster. If it contains a sufficient amount of mass, O stars form and explosively expel the remaining gas, whereas poorer clusters reduce their embryonic gas content more gradually. The sudden expulsion of gas unbinds most of a rich cluster, but a significant fraction of it can condense by two-body interactions to become an open cluster despite a star-formation efficiency as low as 30 per cent. Poorer clusters survive their gradual mass loss more easily, but have short, relaxation-limited life-times. Pleiades-like clusters may thus form as nuclei of expanding OB associations, by filling their tidal radii and having large (1-2 pc) core-radii. A 'main-sequence' of clusters is thus established. Ultimately, a cluster dies an explosive death through the ever shortening relaxation time, and leaves a remnant that consists of about 4-10 stars arranged in a highly hierarchical and thus long-lived system. Dynamical mass segregation in very young clusters is extremely rapid, and heats a cluster substantially, which is partially off-set by the cooling from the disruption of primordial binaries.
dc.descriptionInvited talk, to appear in Asp.Conf.Series, Origin and Evolution of Young Stellar Clusters, 12 pages, 3 figures, replaced version has completed references
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0010405
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0010405
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/1886
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleThe Birth, Evolution and Death of Star Clusters
dc.typetext

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