The Maxwell's demon of star clusters

TL;DR

This paper discusses how stellar binaries act as a crucial energy source in star clusters, influencing their evolution and enabling the formation of exotic stellar objects.

Contribution

It highlights the role of binaries in reversing core collapse and their importance in forming stellar exotica, offering insights into cluster dynamics.

Findings

Binaries prevent core collapse through three-body interactions.

Binaries facilitate the formation of blue stragglers and black hole binaries.

Binaries are key to understanding star cluster evolution.

Abstract

Stellar binaries are the most important energy reservoir of star clusters. Via three-body encounters, binaries can reverse the core collapse and prevent a star cluster from reaching equipartition. Moreover, binaries are essential for the formation of stellar exotica, such as blue straggler stars, intermediate-mass black holes and massive ($\gtrsim{}30$ M$_\odot$) black hole binaries.