2006/12/21 by Hui-Chen Chen, Chen, Hui-Chen, Chung‐Ming Ko +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0612655
4 pages including 4 figures. Proceedings of East Asian Young Astronomers Meeting, Kiyosato, Japan, February 2006
arxiv created 2006/12/21 · openalex publication_date 2006/12/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Star clusters are formed in molecular clouds which are believed to be the birth places of most stars. From recent observational data, Lada & Lada(2003) estimated that only 4 to 7% of the proto-clusters have survived. Many factors could cause this high infant mortality. Galactic tidal forces, close encounters with molecular clouds and shock heating are among the possible causes but they have a longer timescale than typical lifetime of molecular clouds. Another possible reason is mass loss in very beginning of cluster evolution in the form of UV radiation, stellar winds or supernova explosions. Mass loss is the main factor we study in this work by using N-body simulations. We find that most proto-clusters survive for more than 40 Myr even when the mass loss rate is high.