The early dynamical evolution of star clusters near the Galactic Centre

TL;DR

This study investigates how initial conditions influence the evolution and survival of star clusters near the Galactic Centre, highlighting the importance of initial density and the rapid erasure of substructure in fractal distributions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that initial density and tidal radius constraints are crucial for cluster survival and shows that initial substructure is quickly erased, making initial conditions hard to determine.

Findings

Clusters must be within their tidal radius to survive.

Initial fractal substructure is rapidly erased within 2 Myr.

Surviving clusters tend to dynamically mass segregate.

Abstract

We examine the dynamical evolution of both Plummer sphere and substructured (fractal) star forming regions in Galactic Centre (GC) strong tidal fields to see what initial conditions could give rise to an Arches-like massive star cluster by $\sim 2$ Myr. We find that any initial distribution has to be contained within its initial tidal radius to survive, which sets a lower limit of the initial density of the Arches of $\sim$ 600 M$_\odot$ pc$^{-3}$ if the Arches is at 30 pc from the GC, or $\sim$ 200 M$_\odot$ pc$^{-3}$ if the Arches is at 100 pc from the GC. Plummer spheres that survive change little other than to dynamically mass segregate, but initially fractal distributions rapidly erase substructure, dynamically mass segregate and by 2 Myr look extremely similar to initial Plummer spheres, therefore it is almost impossible to determine the initial conditions of clusters in strong tidal fields.