Proto-GCs in strong cosmological tidal fields: early survival and dynamical evolution
Alessandro della Croce (Indiana University)
Tuesday 16/06/2026 @ 14:00, Sala Antonio Sollima (IV piano Battiferro)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detected numerous massive and relatively compact stellar clumps around proto-galaxies at high redshift (z>0.5). Their properties suggest that these systems may represent proto-star clusters, but the possible connection to local old globular clusters (GCs) is poorly understood. In this talk, I will discuss the results of a recent work aimed at exploring the dynamical evolution of proto-star clusters and at defining the link between high-z systems observed by JWST and local GCs. I will first address the survival of proto-star clusters in the high-redshift environments in which they form and evolve. Then, I will compare the systems' properties after 12 Gyr with those of Galactic GCs, showing that the high-z clumps observed by JWST can evolve into realistic GC-like objects. Finally, I will present the dynamical evolution of proto-star clusters in strong tidal fields, showing that these early stages of evolution shape the system's properties we observe today.