The evolution of runaway stellar collision products

Understand

In the cores of young dense star clusters repeated stellar collisions involving the same object can occur, which has been suggested to lead to the formation of an intermediate-mass black hole.

• In order to verify this scenario we compute the detailed evolution of the merger remnant of three sequences.
• We follow the evolution until the onset of carbon burning and estimate the final remnant mass to determine the ultimate fate of a runaway merger sequence.
• We use a detailed stellar evolution code to follow the evolution of the collision product.