The dynamical evolution of young clusters and galactic implications

Abstract

Star clusters are observed to form in a highly compact state and with low starformation efficiencies. If the residual gas is expelled on a dynamical time the clusters disrupt thereby (i) feeding a hot kinematical stellar component into their host-galaxy's field population, and (ii) if the gas-evacuation time-scale depends on cluster mass, then a power-law embedded-cluster mass function transforms within ten to a few dozen Myr to a mass function with a turnover near 105 M⊙, thereby possibly explaining this universal empirical feature. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.