Astronomy
Final Report Abstract
During the Heisenberg Fellowship, I worked mostly on the dynamical simulation of dense stellar systems by means of direct N -body simulations. Systems studied included young star clusters, globular clusters, ultra-compact dwarf galaxies and galactic nuclei. The availability of GPU computers as an alternative to GRAPEs had a major impact on my research and allowed me to study significantly larger systems than what was possible before. Important results achieved were the first simulation of a globular cluster by means of direct N -body simulations, a problem astronomers had been working on since the invention of N-body codes almost 50 years ago, the discovery that modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) fails to describe the dynamics of star clusters, and is therefore probably not an alternative to dark matter, and the discovery that globular clusters most likely formed primordially mass segregatad. Important work was also started concerning the possible existence of intermediatemass black holes in globular clusters, however it has so far not been possible to produce irrefutable proof of their existence.
Publications
- 2009, MNRAS 395, 2304. How well do Starlab and NBODY4 compare? I: Simple models
Anders, P., Baumgardt, H., Bissantz, N., Portegies Zwart, S.
- 2009, MNRAS 396, 1075. Globular cluster systems in nearby dwarf galaxies - II. Nuclear star clusters and their relation to massive Galactic globular clusters
Georgiev, I.Y., Hilker, M., Puzia, T.H., Goudfrooij, P., Baumgardt, H.
- 2010, MNRAS 402, 371. Stellar-mass black holes in star clusters: implications for gravitational wave radiation
Banerjee, S., Baumgardt, H., Kroupa, P.
