Abstract:
The nature of faint stellar systems at the interface between classical globular clusters and dwarf galaxies is currently at the centre of much attention, as they represent the lower limit to the dark matter clustering scale and their properties and demographics provide crucial insight into many open problems in galaxy formation. Dynamical investigations of such objects are usually polarised around a sharp dichotomy: if they are approached as star clusters, they are studied as collisional, dark matter-free objects; if they are treated as satellite galaxies, they are considered as collisionless and dark matter-dominated. But many stellar systems actually fall into the perplexing regime at the interface between collisional and collisionless dynamics, and their dark matter content is hard to pin down. Driven by these motivations, I will present the first results of a new theoretical investigation of the equilibrium and evolutionary properties of collisional stellar systems embedded in small, stationary, dark matter halos.