Rotating globular clusters. II. Relaxation and evaporation.

Details Rotating globular clusters. II. Relaxation and evaporation. Rotating globular clusters. II. Relaxation and evaporation.

Apr 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996a%26a...308..453l&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.308, p.453-464

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

14

Globular Clusters, Stellar Dynamics

Scientific paper

This paper focuses on the influence of rotation on two-body relaxation in globular clusters during the evaporation phase. We derive the Fokker-Planck equation for rotating clusters, in the approximation that the radial anisotropy of the velocity distribution can be neglected; a simple generalization of the King distribution function to rotating clusters is shown to be an approximate solution to this equation. Evaporation rates are computed by applying the Fokker-Planck collision term to this distribution function. The cluster rotation can increase the mass loss rate by up to a factor of 3 to 4 for the most rapidly rotating clusters, although the half-mass relaxation time is lengthened (the total mass loss is smaller due to the decrease of rotational energy in the evolution). Stellar evaporation always produces a decrease of the cluster flattening for the class of cluster model studied here; this provides some support to the idea that the apparent decrease in cluster flattening with age is due to internal relaxation effects. We also show that the evolution of the concentration is not directly driven by the mass loss as soon as the rotational energy exceeds a few percents of the total kinetic energy, in opposition to the behavior along the King sequence for nonrotating cluster. For clusters which rotate sufficiently fast, the concentration can remain constant or even slightly decrease until enough angular momentum and rotational energy is lost.

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