Runaway Collisions in Star Clusters

Abstract

We study the occurrence of physical collisions between stars in young and compact star cluster. The calculations are performed on the GRAPE-4 with the starlab software environment which include the dynamical evolution and the nuclear evolution of all stars and binaries. The selection of the initial conditions is based on existing and well observed star clusters, such as R136 in the 30 Doradus region in the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Arches and Quintuplet star clusters in the vicinity of the Galactic center. Collisions between stars occurred rather frequently in our models. At any time a single star dominates the collision history of the system. The collision rate of this runaway merger scales with the initial relaxation time of the cluster and is independent on other cluster parameters, such as the initial mass function or the initial density profile of the cluster. Subsequent encounters result in a steady grow in mass of the coagulating star, until it escapes or explodes in a supernova. The collision rate in these models is about 0.00022 collisions per star per Myr for a cluster with an initial relaxation time of 1 Myr.