Solar energy paper index
Hubble Space Telescope survey of Magellanic Cloud star clusters. Binaries, mass functions, blue stragglers, and structural parameters
One-line summary
A solar energy research paper on Hubble Space Telescope survey of Magellanic Cloud star clusters. Binaries, mass functions, blue stragglers, and structural parameters.
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Chinese explanation / 中文解读
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Original abstract
Binary stars are key tracers of the dynamical evolution of star clusters and provide important constraints on stellar populations and mass functions. The Magellanic Clouds host clusters spanning a wide range of ages and masses, offering an ideal laboratory to investigate these properties in regimes poorly sampled in the Milky Way. We aim to characterize the binary populations, mass functions, blue straggler content, and structural parameters of intermediate-age Magellanic Cloud clusters, and to explore their dependence on global cluster properties. We analyze HST photometry for 16 clusters obtained with ACS/WFC and WFC3/UVIS. Structural parameters are derived from stellar density profiles. Binary fractions are measured using the binary map technique, focusing on systems with mass ratios q > 0.7. We derive MFs accounting for unresolved binaries and identify candidate BS populations from color-magnitude diagrams. The fraction of binaries with q > 0.7 ranges from 5% in NGC 2121 up to 13% in NGC 2173, with a mass-ratio distribution that is consistent with being flat on average. By combining our results with literature data, we confirm a clear anti-correlation between the core binary fraction and cluster mass, while no significant dependence on cluster age is found. The clusters follow the established relation between age and core radius, although with substantial scatter at fixed age. Within the narrow age range explored here, clusters exhibiting steeper MFs are found to have smaller core radii. We find no evidence for a correlation between the fractions of binaries and BS fractions. These findings are consistent with a scenario in which dynamical evolution plays a primary role in the formation of binary populations. The connection between MF slope and structural parameters provides new constraints on cluster evolution and suggests a link between MF slope and structural evolution.
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