English

Stellar initial mass function in the 100-pc solar neighbourhood

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-04-15 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is among the most fundamental distributions in astrophysics, defined as the mass spectrum of stars produced in a single star-formation event. Even in the solar neighbourhood, where measurements can be conducted via star counting, disentangling the IMF from observational effects remains challenging. In this work we introduce a new parametrisation of the stellar IMF in the 100-pc solar neighbourhood, leveraging the high-precision astrometric and photometric data from \textsl{Gaia} DR3: we model the colour-magnitude diagram of the field star population while accounting for observational uncertainties, Malmquist bias, Lutz-Kelker bias, variations in the mass-luminosity relation arising from metallicity differences, and the effects of unresolved binaries. In particular, we synthesise the binary population with a process imitating the dynamical evolution observed in star clusters to enforce that all components are drawn from the same IMF, while simultaneously recovering the observed present-day mass-ratio distribution. We determine an averaged stellar IMF over 0.25<m<1.0 M0.25<m<1.0~M_{\odot} that aligns with canonical IMFs but achieves significantly tighter constraints: α1=0.750.04+0.06\alpha_1=0.75^{+0.06}_{-0.04}, α2=2.070.03+0.04\alpha_2=2.07^{+0.04}_{-0.03}, and a break point at mbreak=0.400.01+0.01m_{\mathrm{break}}=0.40^{+0.01}_{-0.01} M\mathrm{M_{\odot}}. Our inference also yields an averaged binary fraction over 0.25<m<1.0 M0.25<m<1.0~M_{\odot} of approximately 26\%, and constrains the \textsl{Gaia} DR3 angular resolution to 1.110.08+0.111.11^{+0.11}_{-0.08} arcsec. We also provide the ξ\xi-parameter for our IMF, which is 0.50700.0096+0.00680.5070_{-0.0096}^{+0.0068}, to facilitate direct comparison with other IMF determinations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.12987,
  title  = {Stellar initial mass function in the 100-pc solar neighbourhood},
  author = {Yu-Ting Wang and Chao Liu and Jiadong Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.12987},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:18:43.410Z