Tidal disruption, global mass function and structural parameters
  evolution in star clusters
  [abridged] We present a unified picture for the evolution of star clusters on
the two-body relaxation timescale. We use direct N-body simulations of star
clusters in a galactic tidal field starting from different multi-mass King
models, up to 10% of primordial binaries and up to Ntot=65536 particles. An
additional run also includes a central Intermediate Mass Black Hole. We find
that for the broad range of initial conditions we have studied the stellar mass
function of these systems presents a universal evolution which depends only on
the fractional mass loss. The structure of the system, as measured by the core
to half mass radius ratio, also evolves toward a universal state, which is set
by the efficiency of heating on the visible population of stars induced by
dynamical interactions in the core of the system. Interactions with dark
remnants are dominant over the heating induced by a moderate population of
primordial binaries (3-5%), especially under the assumption that most of the
neutron stars and black holes are retained in the system. All our models
without primordial binaries undergo a deep gravothermal collapse in the radial
mass profile. However their projected light distribution can be well fitted by
medium concentration King models (with parameter W0 ~ 8), even though there
tends to be an excess over the best fit for the innermost points of the surface
brightness. This excess is consistent with a shallow cusp in the surface
brightness (mu(R) ~ R^{-v} with v ~ 0.4-0.7), like it has been observed for
many globular clusters from high-resolution HST imaging. Classification of
core-collapsed globular clusters based on their surface brightness profile is
likely to fail in systems that have already bounced back to lower
concentrations.
