5 Conclusions

When the constraint of selecting the total mass from a cluster (or cloud core) mass spectrum is included in the statistics of choosing stellar masses for cluster members, the decay of few-body star clusters yields binary fractions as a function of spectral type which agree reasonably well with published observations, while still producing an acceptable stellar IMF. In fact, the improvement in BF's is greater than what can be achieved by the inclusion of strongly dissipative interactions in the dynamics of the few-body system. Although proper choices for various input parameters and functional forms are still poorly known, we have shown that plausible assumptions can give acceptable results for the IMF, BF(M), and the secondary mass distribution of G star binaries. Admittedly, it is somewhat difficult to obtain good results for all three simultaneously. Our primary point is that the predictions for binary characteristics from few-body cluster decay are strongly affected, in a generally favorable direction, by including a cluster total mass constraint in the statistics. Few-body decay with two-step mass selection is therefore worthy of further consideration as a potentially important component of the star formation process.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank S. Aarseth, J. Alcalá, M. R. Bate, I. Bonnell, A. Burkert, C. Clarke, C. Deliyannis, B. G. Elmegreen, T. Hartquist, L. Kiseleva, R. Klein, P. Kroupa, R. Larson, E. Levy, C. McKee, R. Neuhäuser, B. Reipurth, and H. Zinnecker for useful conversations and encouragement on aspects of this research over the years. We especially thank the referee F. Palla, whose helpful comments made this a substantially more readable paper. This work was supported in part by NASA Grants NAGW 3399 and NAGW5-4342. Most of the research was done while R.H.D. was an Alexander von Humboldt Awardee at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich. B.K.P.'s efforts were supported in part by a NASA-ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship.