Exploration of the Origin of Galactic and Extragalactic Star Clusters through Simulated H-R Diagrams

Abstract

Abstract The present work explores the origin of the formation of star clusters in our Galaxy and in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) through simulated H-R diagrams and compare those with observed star clusters. The simulation study produces synthetic H-R diagrams through the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique using the star formation history (SFH), luminosity function (LF), abundance of heavy metal (Z), and a big library of isochrones as basic inputs and compares them with observed H-R diagrams of various star clusters. The distance-based comparison between those two diagrams is carried out through two-dimensional matching of points in the color−magnitude diagram (CMD) after the optimal choice of bin size and appropriate distance function. It is found that in a poor medium of heavy elements (Z = 0.0004), the Gaia LF along with a mixture of multiple Gaussian distributions of the SFH may be the origin of formation of globular clusters (GCs). On the contrary, an enriched medium (Z = 0.019) is generally favored with the Gaia LF along with a double power law or Beta-type (i.e., unimodal) SFH, for the formation of globular clusters. For SMC clusters, the choice of an exponential LF and exponential SFH is the proper combination for a poor medium, whereas the Gaia LF with a Beta-type SFH is preferred for the formation of star clusters in an enriched medium.