Core collapse is a prominent evolutionary stage of self-gravitating systems. In an idealised collisionless approximation, the region around the cluster core evolves in a self-similar way prior to the core collapse. Thus, its radial density profile outside the core can be described by a power law, $rho propto r^{-alpha}$. We aim to find the characteristics of core collapse in $N$-body models. In such systems, a complete collapse is prevented by transferring the binding energy of the cluster to binary stars. The contraction is, therefore, more difficult to identify. We developed a method that identifies the core collapse in $N$-body models of star clusters based on the assumption of their homologous evolution. We analysed different models (equal- and multi-mass), most of which exhibit patterns of homologous evolution, yet with significantly different values of $alpha$: the equal-mass models have $alpha approx 2.3$, which agrees with theoretical expectations, the multi-mass models have $alpha approx 1.5$ (yet with larger uncertainty). Furthermore, most models usually show sequences of separated homologous collapses with similar properties. Finally, we investigated a correlation between the time of core collapse and the time of formation of the first hard binary star. The binding energy of such a binary usually depends on the depth of the collapse in which it forms, for example from $100,kT$ to $10^4,kT$ in the smallest equal-mass to the largest multi-mass model, respectively. However, not all major hardenings of binaries happened during the core collapse. In the multi-mass models, we see large transfers of binding energy of $sim 10^4,kT$ to binaries that occur on the crossing timescale and outside of the periods of the homologous collapses.
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