Using the minimum spanning tree to trace mass segregation

By R. Allison, S. Goodwin, Richard J. Parker, S. P. Portegies Zwart, Richard de Grijs, M. Kouwenhoven. 2009

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new method to detect and quantify mass segregation in star clusters. It compares the minimum spanning tree (MST) of massive stars with that of random stars. If mass segregation is present, the MST length of the most massive stars will be shorter than that of random stars. This difference can be quantified (with an associated significance) to measure the degree of mass segregation. We test the method on simulated clusters in both 2D and 3D and show that the method works as expected. We apply the method to the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) and show that the method is able to detect the mass segregation in the Trapezium with a 'mass segregation ratio (MSR)' Lambda(MSR) = 8.0 +/- 3.5 (where Lambda(MSR) = 1 is no mass segregation) down to 16M(circle dot), and also that the ONC is mass segregated at a lower level (similar to 2.0 +/- 0.5) down to 5M(circle dot). Below 5M(circle dot) we find no evidence for any further mass segregation in the ONC.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b4d5bf8c4ce0d2d242540044acdccc684e92802

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Eric Mamajek
2. J. Kruijssen
3. D. Lafrèniere
4. L. Malo
5. J. Gagné
6. R. Doyon
7. Michael C. Liu
8. L. Pueyo

Citations in the corpus

• DYNAMICAL MASS SEGREGATION ON A VERY SHORT TIMESCALE (2009, methodology): “Interestingly, Allison et al. (2009) find that the ONC appears to be mass segregated down to ∼ 5M⊙ but not below that mass. Hillenbrand & Hartmann (1998) also find evidence for mass segregation around 5M⊙, and Moeckel & Bonnell (2009) find that they cannot explain the observations of the ONC unless…”
• BANYAN. XI. The BANYAN Σ Multivariate Bayesian Algorithm to Identify Members of Young Associations with 150 pc (2018, methodology): “A rejection algorithm based on minimum spanning trees (MSTs; e.g. see Allison et al. 2009; Gagné et al. 2015b) was used to ignore outliers in spatial and kinematic space.”
• A Gaia DR2 view of the open cluster population in the Milky Way (2018, background): “It is also well-known that clusters exhibiting mass segregation have significantly different sizes depending on the mag- A93, page 4 of 16 nitude of the stars considered (see e.g. Allison et al. 2009; Cantat-Gaudin et al. 2014; Dib et al. 2018).”
• The dynamical state of stellar structure in star‐forming regions (2011, methodology): “…formation process itself (see the review by McKee & Ostriker 2007) to the fundamental properties of young star clusters (e.g. McMillan et al. 2007; Allison et al. 2009a; Moeckel & Bonnell 2009), or possibly even the global stellar mass assembly of galaxies (see e.g. Pflamm-Altenburg et al. 2007;…”