The Effect of Age on the Grouping of Open Clusters: The Primordial Group Hypothesis

Abstract

The Primordial Group hypothesis states that only sufficiently young open clusters (OCs) can be multiple, and old OCs are essentially isolated. We tested this postulate through four different studies using a manual search of Gaia EDR3 and extensive literature. First, we revisited the work of de La Fuente Marcos and de La Fuente Marcos (2009), which states that only ca. 40% of OC pairs are of primordial origin. However, no plausible binary system among their proposed OC pairs having at least one member older than 0.1 Gyr was found. Second, we researched the OCs < 0.01 Gyr old in Tarricq et al. (2021) and found that ca. 71% of them remain in their primordial groups. Third, a similar study of the oldest OCs (age > 4 Gyr) showed that they are essentially alone. Forth, the well-known case of the double cluster in Perseus and some other binary systems described in the literature were also shown to accommodate the title hypothesis. A simplified bimodal model allows for retrieval of the overall fraction of related OCs (approximately 12–16%) from our results, assuming that young clusters remain associated at ~0.04 Gyr. The obtained results further support that OCs are born in groups (Casado 2021).