Milky Way globular clusters on cosmological timescales

Abstract

Aims. We carry out the self-consistent dynamic evolution of the orbital structure of Milky Way globular clusters. This allows us to estimate possible and probable close passages and even collisions of the clusters with each other. Methods. We reproduced the orbits of 147 globular clusters in 10 Gyr lookback time using our own high-order N-body parallel dynamic φ-GPU code. The initial conditions (three coordinates and three velocities for the present time) were derived from the Gaia DR3 catalogue. For each of the GCs, 1000 initial conditions were additionally generated, taking the Gaia measurement errors into account. The galaxy is represented by five external potentials from the IllustrisTNG-100, whose masses and sizes of the disk and halo components are similar to the physical values of the Milky Way at present. Results. We present a statistical analysis of the cumulative close passages rate: About ten close passages with relative distances shorter than 50 pc for every billion years for each of the five external potentials. We present the 22 most reliable collision pairs with a good probability. As an example: Terzan 4 vs. Terzan 2 (49%), Terzan 4 vs. NGC 6624 (44%), Terzan 4 vs. Terzan 5 (40%), Terzan 4 vs. NGC 6440 (40%), and Terzan 4 vs. Liller 1 (42%). The most active globular cluster in the collision sense is Terzan 4, which has 5.65 collision events on average (averaged over all individual 1000 initial condition realisations). Most collisions are located inside the Galactic disk and form two ring-like structures. The first ring-like structure has the highest collision number density at ∼1 kpc, and the second sturcture has a maximum at ∼2 kpc. Conclusions. Based on our numerical simulations, we can conclude that the few dozen Milky Way globular clusters probably undergo some close encounters and even possible collisions during their lifetimes, which can significantly affect their individual dynamical evolution and possibly even their stellar content.