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It has frequently been suggested that the stellar IMF in galaxies was top-heavy at early times. This would be plausible physically if the IMF depends on a mass scale such as the Jeans mass that was higher at earlier times because of the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 Richard B. Larson

A universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) should not be expected from theoretical models of star formation, but little conclusive observational evidence for a variable IMF has been uncovered. In this paper, a parameterization of the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-06-01 Albert Sneppen , Charles L. Steinhardt , Hagan Hensley , Adam S. Jermyn , Basel Mostafa , John R. Weaver

We calculate the integrated galactic initial stellar mass function (IGIMF) in the presence of IMF variations in clusters. IMF Variations for a population of clusters are taken into account in the form of Gaussian distributions of the IMF…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-10-19 Sami Dib

Observations have not yielded convincing results concerning the form of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) or its variations in space and time, so it is proposed that theoretical models may provide useful guidance. Several classes of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-25 John Scalo

We review our current knowledge on the IMF in nearby environments, massive star forming regions, super star clusters, starbursts and alike objects from studies of integrated light, and discuss the various techniques used to constrain the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Daniel Schaerer

The stellar mass distribution in star-forming regions, stellar clusters and associations, the Initial Mass Function (IMF), appears to be invariant across different star-forming environments, and is consistent with the IMF observed in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-03 Sunder S. K. Singh-Bal , George A. Blaylock-Squibbs , Richard J. Parker , Simon P. Goodwin

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental property of star formation, offering key insight into the physics driving the process as well as informing our understanding of stellar populations, their by-products, and their…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-03-14 M. W. Hosek , J. R. Lu , M. Andersen , T. Do , D. Kim , N. Z. Rui , P. Boyle , B. F. Williams , S. Chakrabarti , R. L. Beaton

Recent evidence based independently on spectral line strengths and dynamical modelling point towards a non-universal stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF), probably implying an excess of low-mass stars in elliptical galaxies with a high…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-16 Carsten Weidner , Ignacio Ferreras , Alexandre Vazdekis , Francesco La Barbera

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) seems to be variable and not universal, as argued in the literature in the last three decades. Several relations among the low-mass end of the IMF slope and other stellar population, photometric or…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-01-13 C. E. Barbosa , C. Spiniello , M. Arnaboldi , L. Coccato , M. Hilker , T. Richtler

We attempt to evaluate whether the integrated galactic IMF (IGIMF) is expected to be steeper than the IMF within individual clusters through direct evaluation of whether there is a systematic dependence of maximum stellar mass on cluster…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2010-09-02 C. Clarke , Th. Maschberger

Here I discuss recent work on brown dwarfs, massive stars and the IMF in general. The stellar IMF can be well described by an invariant two-part power law in present-day star-formation events within the Local Group of galaxies. It is nearly…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2013-12-31 Pavel Kroupa

We propose that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal in the sense that its functional form arises as a consequence of the statistics of random supersonic flows. A model is developed for the origin of the stellar IMF, that…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 Paolo Padoan , Ake Nordlund , Bernard J. T. Jones

Stars do not form continuously distributed over star forming galaxies. They form in star clusters of different masses. This nature of clustered star formation is taken into account in the theory of the integrated galactic stellar initial…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-11-20 Jan Pflamm-Altenburg , Pavel Kroupa

The universality of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is tested using Bayesian statistics with a sample of eight young Galactic stellar clusters (IC 348, ONC, NGC 2024, NGC 6611, NGC 2264, $\rho$ Ophiuchi, Chameleon I, and Taurus). We…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-19 Sami Dib

The initial mass function (IMF) is one of the most important functions in astrophysics because it is key to reconstructing the cosmological matter cycle, understanding the formation of super-massive black holes, and deciphering the light…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-30 Pavel Kroupa , Eda Gjergo , Tereza Jerabkova , Zhiqiang Yan

In this contributed talk I present recent results on the connection between stellar population properties and the normalisation of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) measured using stellar dynamics, based on a large sample of 260…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-23 Richard M. McDermid

We explore the assumption, widely used in many astrophysical calculations, that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal across all galaxies. By considering both a canonical Salpeter-like IMF and a non-universal IMF, we are able…

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies is the combination of the IMF of the stellar population formed in-situ and that of accreted stellar populations. Using as an observable the effective IMF $\alpha_{IMF}$, defined…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-01-18 Alessandro Sonnenfeld , Carlo Nipoti , Tommaso Treu

Gaseous and stellar metallicities in galaxies are nowadays routinely used to constrain the evolutionary processes in galaxies. This requires the knowledge of the average yield per stellar generation, $y_{\text{Z}}$, i.e. the quantity of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-12-16 Fiorenzo Vincenzo , Francesca Matteucci , Francesco Belfiore , Roberto Maiolino

Interpreting galactic luminosity requires assumptions about the galaxy-wide initial mass function (gwIMF), often assumed invariant in most stellar population synthesis (SPS) models. If stars form in clusters with metallicity- and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-02-07 Akram Hasani Zonoozi , Hosein Haghi , Pavel Kroupa