Very massive stars in not so massive clusters

TL;DR

This study investigates how dynamical stellar collisions in young star clusters can produce stars more massive than predicted by the m_max-M_ecl relation, explaining observed outliers like VVV CL041.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates through N-body simulations that dynamical processes can create very massive stars, challenging the notion that the m_max-M_ecl relation is strictly universal at birth.

Findings

8% of simulated clusters form stars >80 Msun via collisions

More than half of clusters host a merger product as the most massive star within 5 Myr

Dynamical evolution can explain outliers like VVV CL041

Abstract

Very young star clusters in the Milky Way exhibit a well-defined relation between their maximum stellar mass, m_max, and their mass in stars, M_ecl. A recent study shows that the young intermediate-mass star cluster VVV CL041 possibly hosts a >80 Msun star, WR62-2, which appears to violate the existence of the m_max-M_ecl relation since the mass of the star is almost two times higher than that expected from the relation. By performing direct N-body calculations with the same mass as the cluster VVV CL041 (3000 Msun), we study whether such a very massive star can be formed via dynamically induced stellar collisions in a binary-rich star cluster that initially follows the m_max-M_ecl relation. Eight out of 100 clusters form a star more massive than 80 Msun through multiple stellar collisions. This suggests that the VVV CL041 cluster may have become an outlier of the relation because of its early-dynamical evolution, even if the cluster followed the relation at birth. We find that more than half of our model clusters host a merger product as its most massive member within the first 5 Myr of cluster evolution. Thus, the existence of stars more massive than the m_max-M_ecl relation in some young clusters is expected due to dynamical processes despite the validity of the m_max-M_ecl relation. We briefly discuss evolution of binary populations in our model.