The survival of star clusters with black hole subsystems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how black hole subsystems influence the long-term evolution and dissolution of star clusters, revealing that IMFs and BH properties critically affect cluster dynamics and survival, especially in strong tidal fields.

Contribution

It introduces a corrected relaxation time accounting for black hole mass fraction, linking black hole properties to cluster evolution and dissolution times.

Findings

Black hole subsystems significantly impact cluster evolution.

Top-heavy IMFs lead to faster cluster dissolution.

Black hole ejections are tied to mass segregation.

Abstract

Recent observations have detected top-heavy IMFs in dense star forming regions like the Arches cluster. Whether such IMFs also exist in old dense stellar systems like globular clusters is difficult to constrain, because massive stars already became black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs). However, studies of stellar dynamics find that BHs/NSs influence the long-term evolution of star clusters. Following Breen & Heggie (2013) and by carrying out two-component $N$-body simulations, we demonstrate how this dynamical impact connects with the shape of IMFs. By investigating the energy balance between the BH subsystem and the global, we find that to properly describe the evolution of clusters, a corrected two-body relaxation time, $T_{rh,p} = T_{rh}/\psi$, is necessary. Because $\psi$ depends on the total mass fraction of BHs, $M_2 / M$, and the mass ratio, $m_2 / m_1$, the cluster dissolution time is sensitive to the property of BHs or IMFs. Especially, the escape rate of BHs via ejections from few-body encounters is linked to mass segregation. In strong tidal fields, top-heavy IMFs easily lead to the fast dissolution of star clusters and the formation of BH-dominant dark clusters, which suggests that the observed massive GCs with dense cores are unlikely to have extreme top-heavy IMFs. With the future observations of gravitational waves providing unique information of BHs/NSs, it is possible to combine the multi-message observations to have better constrains on the IMFs of old star clusters.