Abstract
Many of the most active starburst galaxies are mergers. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the presence of large numbers of young (typically 1 – 500 Myr), massive (103 – 107 M⊙), compact (Reff ≈ 3 pc) star clusters in merging galaxies. The brightest of these clusters have all the attributes expected of protoglobular clusters, hence allowing us to study the formation of globular clusters in the local universe rather than trying to ascertain how they formed ≈ 14 Gyr ago. Similar clusters are also found in non-merging starbursts, barred galaxies, and even normal spiral galaxies. A compilation of the literature indicates that all these systems have similar cluster luminosity functions, with the primary difference being the normalization (i.e., roughly a tenfold increase in the number of clusters in mergers). Hence, the fact that the brightest clusters are in mergers may be largely a statistical result.
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Whitmore, B.C. (2001). Star Clusters in Merging Galaxies. In: Tacconi, L., Lutz, D. (eds) Starburst Galaxies: Near and Far. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 88. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56538-0_14
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