Stars on the run: escaping from stellar clusters

Understand

A significant proportion of Milky Way stars are born in stellar clusters, which dissolve over time so that the members become part of the disc and halo populations of the Galaxy.

• In the present work we will assume that these young stellar clusters live mainly within the disc of the Galaxy and that they can have primordial binary percentages ranging from 0% to as high as 70%.
• We have evolved models of such clusters to an age of 4 Gyr through N-body simulations, paying attention to the stars and binaries that escape in the process.
• We have quantified the contribution of these escaping stars to the Galaxy population by analysing their escape velocity and evolutionary stage at the moment of escape.