2012/10/30 by McMillan, Stephen, Vesperini, Enrico, Kruczek, Nicholas
#Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1210.8200
Several dynamical scenarios have been proposed that can lead to prompt mass segregation on the crossing time scale of a young cluster. They generally rely on cool and/or clumpy initial conditions, and are most relevant to small systems. As a counterpoint, we present a novel dynamical mechanism that can operate in relatively large, homogeneous, cool or cold systems. This mechanism may be important in understanding the assembly of large mass-segregated clusters from smaller clumps.