Evolution of Globular Cluster Systems in Elliptical Galaxies

Abstract

We study the evolution of the main properties of globular cluster systems in elliptical galaxies. In particular, we focus our attention on the evolution of the mass function of globular cluster systems (GCMF), on the fraction of surviving clusters and on the ratio of the final to initial total mass in clusters and we explore the dependence of these properties on the structure of the host galaxy and on the initial GCMF. We show that the observed universality of the GCMF parameters in galaxies with different structures can be reconciled with the effects of evolutionary processes and with the significant differences in the efficiency of evolutionary processes in different host galaxies; the final mean masses of globular cluster systems in massive galaxies can be very similar to each other with a small galaxy-to-galaxy dispersion in spite of large differences in the fraction of surviving clusters.