Title: The fundamental importance of understanding star cluster evolution 

Speaker: Richard de Grijs (KIAA) 

Time: Thursday,10:00am,June 4 

Location: the middle conference room 

Abstract: The”young star cluster group”at Peking University engages in a wide variety of research directions related to star cluster evolution. To study the evolution of dense, massive clusters, we use a combination of groud-and space-bases observations, combined with numerical simulations, of both resolved clusters in the Local Group and integrated observations of predominantly starburst events in the moredistant (still local) Universe. Following an overview of my group'smain achievements, I will focus on exciting new results on the veryrapid evolution of very young (< 20 Myrold) star cluster populations in circumnuclear rings in nearby starburst galaxies. Contrary toexpectations, we find that these populations are characterized by veryrapid evolution, which we suggest to have been induced bycluster-cluster and cluster molecular cloud collisions in the dense rings. Finally, I will highlight some of the latest results we haveobtained based on deep near-infrared observations of the Galactiglobular cluster 47 Tucanae, made with the 4m ESO/VISTA telescope inChile. We have uncovered clear evidence of a radially varying composition of multiple stellar populations within the cluster, aswell as signatures in the stellar mass functions of both mass segregation and the effects of tidal stripping.