Formation of young massive clusters from turbulent molecular clouds

Abstract

We simulate the formation and evolution of young star clusters from turbulent molecular clouds using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics and direct N-body methods. We find that the shape of the cluster mass function that originates from an individual molecular cloud is consistent with a Schechter function with power-law slopes of β =-1.73. The superposition of mass functions turn out to have a power-law slope of