Postdoctoral scholar Václav Pavlík and Enrico Vesperini have recently published their third paper on dynamics in star clusters using computer simulations. Their current work focuses on the influence of an initially radially anisotropic velocity distribution on primordial binaries and mass segregation. Their models show that primordial binary stars are disrupted, ejected, or exchanged at a higher rate if the initial velocity distribution is radially anisotropic compared to an isotropic velocity distribution. They also find that in the anisotropic systems, mass segregation takes longer in the cluster’s core, but happens faster in the cluster’s outer regions.
The team’s simulations of stellar motions in star clusters provide insight into the observed dynamical properties of star clusters, which often show residual velocity anisotropies or rotation, and the clusters’ binary star populations. These phenomena likely originate during cluster formation, and computer simulations that match the clusters as we see them today are the only way to infer the story of their origins. The paper is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022MNRAS.515.1830P).
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