On the trapping of stars by a newborn stellar supercluster
  Numerical experiments conducted by Fellhauer et al. (MNRAS, 372, 338, 2006)
suggest that a supercluster may capture up to about 40 per cent of its mass
from the galaxy where it belongs. Nevertheless, in those experiments the
cluster was created making appear its mass out of nothing, rather than from
mass already present in the galaxy. Here we use a thought experiment, plus a
few simple computations, to show that the difference between the dynamical
effects of these two scenarios (i.e., mass creation vs. mass concentration) is
actually very important. We also present the results of new numerical
experiments, simulating the formation of the cluster through mass
concentration, that show that trapping depends critically on the process of
cluster formation and that the amounts of gained mass are substantially smaller
than those obtained from mass creation.
