Exotic populations in Galactic Globular Clusters

TL;DR

This paper reviews exotic stellar objects in Galactic globular clusters, focusing on Blue Stragglers and Millisecond pulsar companions, highlighting their roles in understanding cluster dynamics and binary evolution.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of Blue Stragglers and Millisecond pulsar companions, emphasizing their significance in studying dense stellar environments and cluster evolution.

Findings

Blue Stragglers serve as indicators of stellar collisions and mergers.

Millisecond pulsar companions reveal binary interaction histories.

Both classes are key to understanding dynamical processes in globular clusters.

Abstract

Recent high-resolution observations of the central region of Galactic globular clusters have shown the presence of a large variety of exotic stellar objects whose formation and evolution may be strongly affected by dynamical interactions. In this paper I review the main properties of two classes of exotic objects: the so-called Blue Stragglers stars and the recently identified optical companions to Millisecond pulsar. Both these class of objects are invaluable tools to investigate the binary evolution in very dense environments and are powerful tracers of the dynamical history of the parent cluster.