{
  "id": "1010.5944",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2010-10-28T12:40:00.000Z",
  "updated": "2010-10-28T12:40:00.000Z",
  "title": "Statistical comparison of clouds and star clusters",
  "authors": [
    "O. Lomax",
    "A. P. Whitworth",
    "A. Cartwright"
  ],
  "comment": "Accepted 2010 October 27. Received 2010 October 25; in original form 2010 September 13 The paper contains 7 figures and 2 tables",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.SR"
  ],
  "abstract": "The extent to which the projected distribution of stars in a cluster is due to a large-scale radial gradient, and the extent to which it is due to fractal sub-structure, can be quantified -- statistically -- using the measure ${\\cal Q} = \\bar{m}/\\bar{s}$. Here $\\bar{m}$ is the normalized mean edge length of its minimum spanning tree (i.e. the shortest network of edges connecting all stars in the cluster) and $\\bar{s}$ is the correlation length (i.e. the normalized mean separation between all pairs of stars). We show how ${\\cal Q}$ can be indirectly applied to grey-scale images by decomposing the image into a distribution of points from which $\\bar{m}$ and $\\bar{s}$ can be calculated. This provides a powerful technique for comparing the distribution of dense gas in a molecular cloud with the distribution of the stars that condense out of it. We illustrate the application of this technique by comparing ${\\cal Q}$ values from simulated clouds and star clusters.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2010-10-28T12:40:00.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "star clusters",
      "statistical comparison",
      "distribution",
      "large-scale radial gradient",
      "normalized mean edge length"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "journal article"
    ],
    "publication": {
      "doi": "10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17935.x",
      "journal": "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society",
      "year": 2011,
      "month": "Mar",
      "volume": 412,
      "number": 1,
      "pages": 627
    },
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 0,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable",
      "inspire": 874754,
      "adsabs": "2011MNRAS.412..627L"
    }
  }
}