Related papers: On the constancy of the high-mass slope of the ini…
Competitive accretion occurs when stars in a cluster accrete from a shared reservoir of gas. The competition arises due to the relative attraction of stars as a function of their mass and location in the cluster. The low relative motions of…
Competitive accretion, a process to explain the origin of the IMF, occurs when stars in a common gravitational potential accrete from a distributed gaseous component. We show that concerns recently raised on the efficiency of competitive…
We report a set of numerical experiments aimed at addressing the applicability of competitive accretion to explain the high-mass end of the stellar initial mass function in a sheet geometry with shallow gravitational potential, in contrast…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. As these clusters typically contain more mass in gas than in stars, accretion can play an important role in determining the final stellar masses. Numerical simulations of gas…
Observations of normal galactic star-forming regions suggest there is widespread near-uniformity in the initial stellar mass function (IMF) in spite of diverse physical conditions. Fluctuations may come largely from statistical effects and…
The stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) seems to be close to universal in the local star-forming regions. However, this quantity of a newborn stellar population responds differently at gas metallicities $Z \sim$ $Z_\odot$ than $Z$ = 0. A…
While the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) appears to be close to universal within the Milky Way galaxy, it is strongly suspected to be different in the primordial Universe, where molecular hydrogen cooling is less efficient and the gas…
The current status of both the observational evidence and the theory of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is reviewed, with particular attention to the two basic, apparently universal features shown by all observations of nearby…
We present observational evidence of the correlation between the high-mass slope of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in young star clusters and their stellar surface density, $\sigma_{*}$. When the high-mass end of the IMF is…
We examine whether existing data in clusters, both old and young, and in the field of the Galactic disk and halo is consistent with a universal slope for the initial mass function (IMF). The most reasonable statement that can be made at the…
In this work, we derive the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from the superposition of mass distributions of dense cores, generated through gravoturbulent fragmentation of unstable clumps in molecular clouds (MCs) and growing through…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) in star clusters is reviewed. Uncertainties in the observations are emphasized. We suggest there is a distinct possibility that cluster IMFs vary systematically with density or pressure. Dense…
We investigate how the dynamical state of a turbulently supported, 1000 solar mass, molecular cloud affects the properties of the cluster it forms, focusing our discussion on the star formation efficiency (SFE) and the initial mass function…
In an improved model of protostar mass functions (PMFs), protostars gain mass from isothermal cores in turbulent clumps. Their mass accretion rate is similar to Shu accretion at low mass, and to reduced Bondi accretion at high mass.…
Observed variations in the slope of the initial stellar mass function are shown to be consistent with a model in which the protostellar gas is randomly sampled from hierarchical clouds at a rate proportional to the square root of the local…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is playing a critical role in the history of our universe. We propose a theory that is based solely on local processes, namely the dust opacity limit, the tidal forces and the properties of the…
We present a simple physical mechanism that can account for the observed stellar mass spectrum for masses $\ms \simgreat 0.5 \solm$. The model depends solely on the competitive accretion that occurs in stellar clusters where each star's…
Numerical simulations have shown the occurence of a scenario termed ''super-competitive accretion'', a term that describes a situation where only the central few objects grow supermassive while a larger number of stars compete for the…
There are now two dominant models of how stars form: gravitational collapse theory holds that star-forming molecular clumps, typically hundreds to thousands of solar masses in mass, fragment into gaseous cores that subsequently collapse to…
We review recent advances in our understanding of the origin of the initial mass function (IMF). We emphasize the use of numerical simulations to investigate how each physical process involved in star formation affects the resulting IMF. We…