Professor Enrico Vesperini and his students are exploring the dynamical evolution of multiple stellar populations in globular star clusters with funding from the National Science Foundation. Globular star clusters in the Milky Way are ancient, massive clusters containing hundreds of thousands of stars. These clusters are fossils of the earliest massive star forming events in the Universe, so they provide important clues to the formation of our Milky Way Galaxy. Observational studies have shown that stars within these clusters are not all formed at once, as previously thought, and that they exhibit a range of chemical compositions.
Computer simulations of the birth and evolution of globular clusters can trace motions of the stars back to the formation of the clusters. Modelling the formation and dynamical changes with time of multiple populations of stars tell us about 1) the formation of multiple-population clusters and the characterization of the initial structural and kinematical properties of first- and second-generation stars, 2) the early and long-term evolution of the dynamical properties of first- and second-generation stars, 3) the role of internal dynamical processes and the external tidal field of the host galaxy in the evolution of multiple-population clusters, and 4) the evolution of the fundamental properties of the cluster's stellar content and how they are affected by the different initial structural properties of multiple populations.
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