Disruption time scales of star clusters in different galaxies
By H. Lamers, M. Gieles, S. P. Portegies Zwart. 2004
134 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The observed average lifetime of the population of star clusters in the Solar Neighbourhood, the Small Magellanic Cloud and in selected regions of M 51 and M 33 is compared with simple theoretical predictions and with the results of N-body simulations. The empirically derived lifetimes (or disruption times) of star clusters depend on their initial mass as tdis emp ∝ Mcl 0.60 in all four galaxies. N-body simulations have shown that the predicted disruption time of clusters in a tidal field scales as tdis pred ∝ t 0.75 rh t 0.25 cr ,w heretrh is the initial half-mass relaxation time and tcr is the crossing time for a cluster in equilibrium. We show that this can be approximated accurately by tdis pred ∝ M 0.62 cl for clusters in the mass range of about 10 3 to 10 6 M � ,i n excellent agreement with the observations. Observations of clusters in different extragalactic environments show that tdis also depends on the ambient density in the galaxies where the clusters reside. Linear analysis predicts that the disruption time will depend on the ambient density of the cluster environment as tdis ∝ ρ −1/2 amb . This relation is consistent with N-body simulations. The empirically derived disruption times of clusters in the Solar Neighbourhood, in the SMC and in M 33 agree with these predictions. The best fitting expression for the disruption time is tdis = Cenv(Mcl/10 4 M� ) 0.62 (ρamb/Mpc −3 ) −0.5 where Mcl is the initial mass of the cluster and Cenv � 300−800 Myr. The disruption times of star clusters in M 51 within 1−5 kpc from the nucleus, is shorter than predicted by about an order of magnitude. This discrepancy might be due to the strong tidal field variations in M 51, caused by the strong density contrast between the spiral arms and interarm regions, or to the disruptive forces from giant molecular clouds.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e1e09dc3df8388e88c732fe748fac0d4b4ef6330
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Multiple populations in globular clusters (2012, background): “Since these processes may lead to cluster dissolution on a timescale comparable to the lifetime of the globular clusters (see e.g., Lamers et al. 2005), current globular clusters are the survivors of a potentially larger initial population (Fall & Rees, 1977; Gnedin & Ostriker 1997).”
- MODELING THE METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION OF GLOBULAR CLUSTERS (2010, methodology): “Their formula is similar to the empirical estimates of the disruption time by Lamers et al. (2005): ν−1ev ∝ M0.”
- The Birth Environment of the Solar System (2010, methodology): “To produce these curves, we have used the cluster properties outlined in Section 3.2, including the lifetime estimate for bound clusters (from Lamers et al. 2005).”
- Star cluster disruption by giant molecular clouds (2006, methodology): “In the solar neighbourhood, the observed t4 for open clusters (t4 = 1.3Gyr, see Lamers et al. 2005) is a factor of 5 lower than expected from the disruption time due to the galactic tidal field, combined with a realistic stellar mass function and with stellar evolution (t4 = 6.9Gyr, see Baumgardt &…”
- AGE DETERMINATION OF SIX INTERMEDIATE-AGE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD STAR CLUSTERS WITH HST/ACS (2008, unknown): “Furthermore, the intermediateage clusters in the SMC might survive for a Hubble time, due to their high mass and the structure of the SMC (no bulge or disk to be passed) (Hunter et al. 2003; Lamers et al. 2005; Gieles et al. 2007).”
- The dynamical state of stellar structure in star‐forming regions (2011, background): “However, dense star-forming regions are generally also more disruptive to clustered structure due to the higher frequency and amplitude of tidal shocks (Lamers et al. 2005; Kruijssen et al. 2011).”