The Nature and Nurture of Star Clusters
Bruce G. Elmegreen (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)

TL;DR
This paper explores the hierarchical formation and structure of star clusters, their connection to star formation processes, and the evolution of globular cluster mass functions across different galactic environments.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive analysis of the hierarchical nature of star clusters and proposes explanations for the observed properties and mass functions of globular clusters.
Findings
Star clusters exhibit hierarchical patterns in space and time.
The fraction of star formation in clusters varies with interstellar pressure.
Globular clusters have lost low-mass members, affecting their mass function.
Abstract
Star clusters have hierarchical patterns in space and time, suggesting formation processes in the densest regions of a turbulent interstellar medium. Clusters also have hierarchical substructure when they are young, which makes them all look like the inner mixed parts of a pervasive stellar hierarchy. Young field stars share this distribution, presumably because some of them came from dissolved clusters and others formed in a dispersed fashion in the same gas. The fraction of star formation that ends up in clusters is apparently not constant, but may increase with interstellar pressure. Hierarchical structure explains why stars form in clusters and why many of these clusters are self-bound. It also explains the cluster mass function. Halo globular clusters share many properties of disk clusters, including what appears to be an upper cluster cutoff mass. However, halo globulars are…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
