We study the first \sim 100 Myr of the evolution of isolated star clusters initially containing 144179 stars , including 13107 ( 10 % ) primordial hard binaries .
Our calculations include the effects of both stellar and binary evolution .
Gravitational interactions among the stars are computed by direct N-body integration using high precision GRAPE-6 hardware .
The evolution of the core radii and central concentrations of our simulated clusters are compared with the observed sample of young ( \aplt 100 Myr ) star clusters in the large Magellanic cloud .
Even though our simulations start with a rich population of primordial binaries , core collapse during the early phase of the cluster evolution is not prevented .
Throughout the simulations , the fraction of binaries remains roughly constant ( \sim 10 % ) .
Due to the effects of mass segregation the mass function of intermediate-mass main-sequence stars becomes as flat as \alpha = -1.8 in the central part of the cluster ( where the initial Salpeter mass function had \alpha = -2.35 ) .
About 6–12 % of the neutron stars were retained in our simulations ; the fraction of retained black holes is 40–70 % .
In each simulation about three neutron stars become members of close binaries with a main-sequence companion .
Such a binary will eventually become an x-ray binary , when the main-sequence star starts to fill its Roche lobe .
Black holes are found more frequently in binaries ; in each simulated cluster we find \sim 11 potential x-ray binaries containing a black hole .
Binaries consisting of two white dwarfs are quite common , but few ( 20–30 ) are sufficiently close that they will merge within a Hubble time due to the emission of gravitational radiation .
Clusters with shorter relaxation times tend to produce fewer merging white dwarf binaries .
The white dwarf binaries that do merge are all sufficiently massive to produce a type Ia supernova .
The densest cluster produces about twice as many blue stragglers as a field population containing the same number of binaries , and these blue stragglers are more massive , bluer and brighter than in less dense clusters .