Princeton University Star Formation/ISM Rendezvous (SFIR)

Stellar cluster populations in the Local Universe show a wide range of properties, suggesting that these objects form via a unique physical channel, and that their demographics are shaped by their formation and evolution in an evolving cosmic environment. This scenario links the current cluster formation sites in the disks of the Antennae galaxies to the old GC population that mostly populates the halo of the Milky Way, implying that their evolution is tightly coupled to that of their host galaxy. To understand the observed cluster populations, it has become necessary to use numerical simulations that can model the co-formation and evolution of stellar clusters alongside their galactic environments over a Hubble time. In this talk, I will explore different numerical approximations that allow us to model the co-formation and evolution of star clusters and their host galaxies. I will introduce the EMP-Pathfinder simulations (Reina-Campos to be subm.), a suite of cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies with sub-grid stellar cluster populations. As a key ingredient in these simulations, we include a description of the multi-phase nature of the ISM, which enables studies of how the presence of a cold, molecular ISM affects star cluster formation and evolution. I will show that GC populations emerge self-consistently in this scenario after 10 Gyr of co-evolution with their host galaxy, and I will end briefly discussing how cluster demographics can be used as diagnostic tools for baryonic models in upcoming galaxy formation simulations that also include a description of the cold ISM.