18 février 2020The evolution of Galactic globular clusters: inspirals and mergers

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Le 2 février 2018
De 10h30 à 12h00

Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battisti

MPIA

 

Globular clusters (GCs), for long considered single stellar populations, recently revealed their real complex nature. Most of them, if not all, indeed host multiple stellar populations and few very massive ones seem to show star-by-star spreads in iron content. In this seminar I will take a journey following the orbital and internal chemo-dynamical evolution of Galactic globular clusters, from their birth place down to the Galactic nucleus. By means of detailed N-body simulations, I will illustrate how they can interact and strip material from each other, or even merge, to produce the observed metallicity spreads. The most massive and dense GCs survive the Galactic tidal force and, because of dynamical friction, they decay to the Galactic centre. As I will show, these GCs, finally arrived at the end of their journey, could contribute to the formation of the central nuclear star cluster.