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| Paper: |
Residual Gas Loss from Young Globular Clusters |
| Volume: |
92, Formation of the Galactic Halo. . . . Inside and Out |
| Page: |
495 |
| Authors: |
Goodwin, Simon P. |
| Abstract: |
N-body simulations are carried out to model the effects of the expulsion of the residual gas left in globular clusters after the initial star formation ephisode. Three types of gas loss are modeled, in the first gas is gradually expelled by the UV flux and strong stellar winds produced by massive young stars. The second model involves the progressive depletion of the gas by supernovae explosions. In the third model, successive supernovae combine to form a `supershell' which sweeps up all of the gas in the cluster. The state of the cluster after the gas loss is compared with the King model based cluster simulations of Chernoff and Shapiro (1987) to determine the end state of the cluster (survival or destruction) after a Hubble time. It is found that gas loss seriously affects the structure of clusters, far reducing the number of clusters that would be expected to survive to the present day. It appears that clusters with an Initial Mass Function of 2.5 or less will not be able to survive the combined effects of gas expulsion and mass loss due to stellar evolution. It is also found that clusters which are formed with a high central stellar concentration and an IMF slope of 3.5 or higher may well be able to survive for a Hubble time with a star formation efficiency below 50%. |
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