English

Inversely synthesizing the core mass function of high-mass star-forming regions from the canonical initial mass function

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-03-18 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Many studies have revealed that the core mass function (CMF) in high-mass star-forming regions is top-heavy. In this work, we start from the canonical initial mass function (IMF) to inversely synthesize the observed CMFs of high-mass star formation regions, taking into account variations in multiplicity and mass conversion efficiency from core to star (ϵcore\epsilon_{\rm core}). To match the observed CMFs, cores of different masses should have varying ϵcore\epsilon_{\rm core}, with ϵcore\epsilon_{\rm core} increasing as the core mass decreases. However, the multiplicity fraction does not affect the synthesized CMFs. To accurately fit the high-mass end of the CMF, it is essential to determine whether the CMF shows a slope transition from the low-mass end to the high-mass one. If the CMF truly undergoes a slope transition but observational biases obscure it, leading to a combined fit with a shallower slope, this could artificially create a top-heavy CMF.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.12251,
  title  = {Inversely synthesizing the core mass function of high-mass star-forming regions from the canonical initial mass function},
  author = {J. W. Zhou and Pavel Kroupa and Sami Dib},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.12251},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in A&A Letter