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arXiv 0901.1309astro-ph.GA
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球状星团中的蓝钩星

Blue Hook Stars in Globular Clusters

A. Dieball, C. Knigge, T. J. Maccarone, K. S. Long, D. C. Hannikainen, D. Zurek, M. Shara

摘要:

蓝钩星(BHk)是一种罕见的水平分支星,迄今为止只在极少数的银河系球状星团(GC)中发现。产生这些物体的主要机制目前尚不清楚。为了测试是否存在的BHk人口在一个给定的GC是链接到特定的物理或结构的集群属性,我们已经构建了一个父样的GC,现有的数据足以建立BHk人口的存在或不存在的信心。然后,我们比较我们的父样本中包含BHk人口的那些集群的属性。我们发现BHk和非BHk星团之间只有一个令人信服的区别:所有已知的BHk星团都是异常巨大的。然而,我们也发现,BHk集群是一致的,均匀分布在父样本的累积质量分布。因此,虽然有吸引力的建议是有一个较低的质量截止的集群能够形成BHk恒星,数据并不需要这一点。相反,对大质量星团的明显偏好仍然可能是纯粹的统计效应:只有通过搜索足够多的恒星才能找到本质上罕见的天体。

英文摘要:

Blue hook (BHk) stars are a rare class of horizontal branch stars that so far have been found in only very few Galactic globular clusters (GCs). The dominant mechanism for producing these objects is currently still unclear. In order to test if the presence of BHk populations in a given GC is linked to specific physical or structural cluster properties, we have constructed a parent sample of GCs for which existing data is sufficient to establish the presence or absence of BHk populations with confidence. We then compare the properties of those clusters in our parent sample that do contain a BHk population to those that do not. We find that there is only one compelling difference between BHk and non-BHk clusters: all known BHk clusters are unusually massive. However, we also find that the BHk clusters are consistent with being uniformly distributed within the cumulative mass distribution of the parent sample. Thus, while it is attractive to suggest there is is a lower mass cut-off for clusters capable of forming BHk stars, the data do not require this. Instead, the apparent preference for massive clusters could still be a purely statistical effect: intrinsically rare objects can only be found by searching a sufficiently large number of stars.

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