Bibcode
Tenorio-Tagle, Guillermo; Silich, Sergiy; Palouš, Jan; Muñoz-Tuñón, Casiana; Wünsch, Richard
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 879, Issue 1, article id. 58, 9 pp. (2019).
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7
2019
Journal
Citations
6
Refereed citations
6
Description
By adopting empirical estimates of the helium enhancement (ΔY)
between consecutive stellar generations for a sample of Galactic
globular clusters (GGCs), we uniquely constraint the star formation
efficiency (ɛ) of each stellar generation in these stellar
systems. In our approach, the star formation efficiency (ɛ) is
the central factor that links stellar generations as it defines both
their stellar mass and the remaining mass available for further star
formation, fixing also the amount of matter required to contaminate the
next stellar generation. In this way, ɛ is here shown to be
fully defined by the He enhancement between successive stellar
generations in a GC. Our approach also has an impact on the evolution of
clusters and thus considers the possible loss of stars through
evaporation, tidal interactions and stellar evolution. We focus on the
present mass ratio between consecutive stellar generations (M
(j‑1)G /M (j)G ) and the present total mass
of GGCs (M GC). Such considerations suffice to determine the
relative proportion of stars of consecutive generations that remain
today in globular clusters (α (j‑1)G /α
(j)G ). The latter is also shown to directly depend on the
values of ΔY and thus the He enhancement between consecutive
stellar generations in GGC places major constraints on models of star
formation and evolution of GC.
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Casiana
Muñoz Tuñón