Young cluster development

Most stars do not form in isolation but as part of a stellar group consisting of a few dozen to several million stars with stellar densities ranging from 0.01 to several 100 M⊙ pc^-3. The majority of these clusters dissolve within 20 Myr. The general assumption is that clusters are born more or less over this entire density range. Our research shows that clustered star formation works under surprisingly tight constraints with respect to cluster size and density. The observed multitude of cluster densities simply results from snapshots of two sequences evolving in time along pre-defined tracks in the density-radius plane.