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Description
The stellar content of Galactic open clusters (OCs) is gradually depleted during their evolution as a result of internal relaxation and external interactions. The final residues of the long-term evolution of OCs are called open cluster remnants (OCRs).These are sparsely populated structures that can barely be distinguished from the field. We aimed to characterise and compare the dynamical states of a set of 16 objects catalogued as OCRs or OCR candidates. The sample also includes 7 objects that are catalogued as dynamically evolved OCs for comparison purposes. We used photometric data from the 2MASS catalogue, proper motions and parallaxes from the GAIA DR2 catalogue, and a decontamination algorithm that was applied to the three-dimensional astrometric space of proper motions and parallaxes ({mu}_{alpha}, {mu}_{delta}, {varpi}) for stars in the objects' areas. The investigated OCRs present masses (M) and velocity dispersions ({sigma}_v_) within well-defined ranges: M between ~10-40M_{sun} and {sigma}_v_ between ~1-7km/s. Some objects in the remnant sample have a limiting radius R_lim_<~2pc, which means that they are more compact than the investigated OCs; other remnants have R_lim_ between ~2-7pc, which is comparable to the OCs. In general, our clusters show signals of depletion of low-mass stars. This confirms their dynamically evolved states. Using results from N-body simulations, we conclude that the OCRs we studied are in fact remnants of initially very populous OCs (N_0_~10^3^-10^4^stars). The outcome of the long-term evolution is to bring the final residues of the OCs to dynamical states that are similar to each other, thus masking out the memory of the initial formation conditions of star clusters.
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