The stellar masses, mean ages, metallicities, and star formation histories of galaxies are now commonly estimated via stellar population synthesis (SPS) techniques. SPS relies on stellar evolution calculations from the main sequence to stellar death, stellar spectral libraries, phenomenological dust models, and stellar initial mass functions (IMFs) to translate the evolution of a multi-metallic...

Stellar clusters are thought to be the simplest stellar systems and the closest observational counterparts to theoretical models for single stellar populations. Progress in our understanding of the atmospheres and evolution of massive stars has led to generally reliable synthesis models. The future release of new evolution models with rotation, however, will require non-trivial updates to previ...

xvii Chapter 1 Motivation 1 Chapter 2 Stellar evolution, Compact Stars, Accretion discs and X-ray binaries 3 2.1 Stellar evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1.1 Star Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1.1.1 Protostars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1.1.2 Stellar Mass limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 ...