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Douglas C. Heggie

Publications and source records attributed to Douglas C. Heggie.

56 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Star Clusters

This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects dynamical evolution deep in the core, and the spectrum of stellar masses; in turn the evolution of the core determines the highest stellar densities, and the rate of encounters. In this way external tidal effects indirectly influence the formation and evolution of blue stragglers, binary pulsars, X-ray sources, etc. More controversially, the stellar density appears to influence the relative distribution of normal stars. In the opposite sense, the evolution of individual stars governs much of the early dynamics of a globular cluster, and the existence of large numbers of primordial binary stars has changed important details of our picture of the dynamical evolution. New computational tools which will become available in the next few years will help dynamical theorists to address these questions.

astro-ph↗

Statistics of N-body Simulations I. Equal Masess Before Core Collapse

We study the dynamical evolution of idealised stellar systems by averaging results from many $N$-body simulations, each having modest numbers of stars. For isolated systems with stars of uniform mass, we discuss aspects of evolution up to the point of core collapse: relaxation and its $N$-dependence, the evolution of the density profile, the development of the velocity dispersion and anisotropy, and the rate of stellar escape.

astro-ph↗