The decay of OB-star cores of ONC-type star clusters

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Pavel Kroupa
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2007 to 2010
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 44929370

• Final Report Year: 2010

Final Report Abstract

We tried to investigate the decay of OB-star cores of ONC-type star clusters with a simplified star cluster model, in which the orbits of high-mass stars are followed by integrating the equations of motions but representing the remaining low-mass stars by an additional background potential and considering two-body relaxation between high- and low-mass stars by dynamical friction. We have chosen this kind of model because of the expected efficiency. Technical problems which we encountered while including dynamical friction consistently motivated us to perform full N-body simulations, which are much more time consuming but more reliable. This work is still in progress as it can not be performed within the funded 15 months. As a result of the funded project we published one paper (Pflamm-Altenburg & Kroupa, 2010, MNRAS) on the two-step ejection mechanism.

Publications

• 2010, MNRAS, 404, 1564 - Two step ejection of massive stars and the issue of their formation in isolation
  Pflamm-Altenburg, Jan & Kroupa, Pavel