astro8531
The Physics of Dense Stellar Systems as the Building Blocks of Galaxies - astro8531 Course The Physics of Dense Stellar Systems as the Building Blocks of Galaxies Course No. astro8531 Category Type Language Teaching hours CP Semester Elective Lecture with exercises English 3+2 6 WT Requirements: Preparation: Participation in the lecture course and in the exercise classes and reading Form of Testing and Examination: A final two hour written exam on the contents of the course Length of Course: 1 semester Aims of the Course: The students are taught the fundamentals of collisional stellar dynamics and of the emergence of stellar populations from galactic building blocks Contents of the Course: Fundamentals of stellar dynamics: distribution functions, generating functions, collisionless Boltzmann equation, Jeans equations, Fokker-Planck equation, dynamical states, collisional dynamics and relaxation, formal differentiation between star clusters and galaxies, mass segregation, evaporation, ejection, star-cluster evolution, the form, variation and origin of the stellar initial mass function, stellar populations, their evolution and their properties, binary stars as energy sinks and sources, the distribution functions of binary stars and the evolution of these distribution functions, star-cluster birth, violent relaxation, birth of dwarf galaxies. ...