SCYON Abstract

Received on September 05 2011

Evolution of star clusters in arbitrary tidal fields

Authors	Florent Renaud (^1,2,3), Mark Gieles (²) and Christian M. Boily (¹)
Affiliation	(¹) Observatoire Astronomique and CNRS UMR 7550, Université de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Université, F-67000 Strasbourg, France (²) Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA, UK (³) Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU/SAp, Université Paris Diderot, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
Accepted by	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Contact	florent.renaud@cea.fr
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Abstract

e present a novel and flexible tensor approach to computing the effect of a time-dependent tidal field acting on a stellar system. The tidal forces are recovered from the tensor by polynomial interpolation in time. The method has been implemented in a direct-summation stellar dynamics integrator (Nbody6) and test-proved through a set of reference calculations: heating, dissolution time and structural evolution of model star clusters are all recovered accurately. The tensor method is applicable to arbitrary configurations, including the important situation where the background potential is a strong function of time. This opens up new perspectives in stellar population studies reaching to the formation epoch of the host galaxy or galaxy cluster, as well as for star-burst events taking place during the merger of large galaxies. A pilot application to a star cluster in the merging galaxies NGC 4038/39 (the Antennae) is presented.