N-body Simulation of a Young Open Cluster

Abstract

The evolutionary process of young clusters remains unclear. In order to investigate the detailed dynamical evolution of star clusters, this paper simulates a young open cluster to tens of million years, via a reliable N-body simulation code. The dynamical interactions among stars, and stellar evolution of both single and bianry stars have been taken into account. The position, velocity, effective temperature, luminosity, radius and mass of each star are finally calculated at different ages. It is shown that the size of simulated cluster increases with time. The size evolution of cluster is found to depend on the initial velocities of stars. Therefore, to determine the initial states of clusters is of key importance in the simulation of star clusters. The paralell computing technique is also tested by this simulation. The result shows that the computation speed is enhanced by six times when taking 8-core paralell computation instead of 1-core computation.