Tootfinder

The young stellar clusters in M51 and the impact of GMC encounters
Timmi G. J{\o}rgensen, Ross P. Church
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17846 https://arxiv.org…

The young stellar clusters in M51 and the impact of GMC encounters
We investigate the young stellar cluster population of M51 and how it is affected by encounters with giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We combine a galactic model with $N$-body simulations of 5000 unique clusters in the mass range [600 - 24000] $M_{\odot}$. We simulate each cluster twice: with ($C_R$) and without ($C_N$) tidal perturbations from the GMCs. We are able to reproduce the majority of the observed mass- and age functions. However, for the age function we see a large discrepancy for clus…