Diversity of nuclear star cluster formation mechanisms revealed by their star formation histories

Understand

Nuclear star clusters (NSCs) are the densest stellar systems in the Universe and are found in the centres of all types of galaxies.

• They are thought to form via mergers of star clusters such as ancient globular clusters (GCs) that spiral to the centre as a result of dynamical friction or through in-situ star formation directly at the galaxy centre.
• There is evidence that both paths occur, but the relative contribution of either channel and their correlation with galaxy properties are not yet constrained observationally.
• We aim to derive the dominant NSC formation channel for a sample of 25 nucleated galaxies, mostly in the Fornax galaxy cluster, with stellar masses between $M_\rm{gal} \sim 10^8$ and $10^{10.5} M_\odot$ and NSC masses between $M_\rm{NSC} \sim 10^5$ and $10^{8.5} M_\odot$.