Cluster Disruption: From infant mortality to long term survival

Abstract

How stellar clusters disrupt, and over what timescales, is intimately linked with how they form. Here, we review the theory and observations of cluster disruption, both the suggested initial rapid dissolution phase (infant mortality) and the longer timescale processes that affect clusters after they emerge from their progenitor GMCs. Over the past decade, the standard paradigm that has developed is that all/most stars are formed in clusters and that the vast majority of these groups are disrupted over short timescales (< 10 Myr). This is thought to be due to the removal of the left over gas from the star-formation process, known as infant mortality. However, recent results have suggested that the fraction of stars that form in clusters has been overestimated, with the majority being formed in unbound groups (i.e. associations) which expand and disrupt without the need of invoking gas removal. Dynamical measurements of young massive clusters in the Galaxy suggest that clusters reach a stable equilibrium at very young (