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Related papers: The initial mass function of early-type galaxies

200 papers

The measured star-formation rates (SFRs) of galaxies comprise an important constraint on galaxy evolution and also on their cosmological boundary conditions. Any available tracer of the SFR depends on the shape of the mass-distribution of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-12-22 Pavel Kroupa , Tereza Jerabkova

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes the mass distribution of stars at the time of their formation and is of fundamental importance for many areas of astrophysics. The IMF is reasonably well constrained in the disk of the Milky…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-20 Pieter van Dokkum , Charlie Conroy

We investigated a volume-limited sample of LAMOST main-sequence stars with masses from 0.25 to 1 $M_{\odot}$ and distances of 150-350 pc to explore how the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies with metallicity. We corrected the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-07 Dan Qiu , Chao Liu , Jennifer A. Johnson , Jiadong Li , Bo Zhang

This work aims to study the distribution of luminous and dark matter in Coma early-type galaxies. Dynamical masses obtained under the assumption that mass follows light do not match with the masses of strong gravitational lens systems of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-27 J. Thomas , R. P. Saglia , R. Bender , D. Thomas , K. Gebhardt , J. Magorrian , E. M. Corsini , G. Wegner , S. Seitz

Research on the high-mass end of the initial mass function (IMF) has been limited due to a scarcity of samples. Recently, Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), as the most efficient spectroscopic telescope, has…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-05-21 Qida Li , Jianping Xiong , Zhenwei Li , Dan Qiu , Chao Liu , Zhanwen Han , Xuefei Chen

We report on empirical trends between the dynamically determined stellar initial mass function (IMF) and stellar population properties for a complete, volume-limited sample of 260 early-type galaxies from the Atlas3D project. We study…

A wealth of observations recently challenged the notion of a universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) by showing evidences in favour of a variability of this statistical indicator as a function of galaxy properties. I present…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-06-17 Fabio Fontanot

The complexity of constraining the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in early-type galaxies cannot be overstated, given the necessity of both very high signal-to-noise (S/N) data and the difficulty of breaking the strong degeneracies that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-10-27 Ilaria Lonoce , Anja Feldmeier-Krause , Wendy L. Freedman

We review recent determinations of the present day and initial mass functions in various components of the Galaxy, disk, spheroid, young and globular clusters. As a general feature, the IMF is well described by a power-law form for $m\ga 1…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Gilles Chabrier

The initial mass function (IMF) succinctly characterizes a stellar population, provides a statistical measure of the end result of the star-formation process, and informs our under- standing of the structure and dynamical evolution of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2011-07-25 Kevin R. Covey , Nate Bastian , Michael R. Meyer

The universality or non-universality of the initial mass function (IMF) has significant implications for determining star formation rates and star formation histories from photometric properties of stellar populations. We reexamine whether…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-01-17 R. P. V. Rautio , A. E. Watkins , H. Salo , A. Venhola , J. H. Knapen , S. Comerón

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) plays a crucial role in determining the number of surviving stars in galaxies, the chemical composition of the interstellar medium, and the distribution of light in galaxies. A key unsolved question…

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

We investigate in massive early-type galaxies the variation of their two-dimensional central fraction of dark over total mass and dark matter density as a function of stellar mass, central stellar velocity dispersion, effective radius, and…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-19 Claudio Grillo

Chemical and photometric models of elliptical galaxies with infall of primordial gas, and subsequent ejection of processed material via galactic winds, are described. Ensuring that these models are consistent with the present-day…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-01-13 Brad K. Gibson , Francesca Matteucci

The stellar initial mass function (IMF), which is often assumed to be universal across unresolved stellar populations, has recently been suggested to be "bottom-heavy" for massive ellipticals. In these galaxies, the prevalence of…

The heavyweight stellar initial mass function (IMF) observed in the cores of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) has been linked to formation of their cores in an initial swiftly-quenched rapid starburst. However, the outskirts of ETGs are…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-04-19 Padraig D. Alton , Russell J. Smith , John R. Lucey

We use the relations between aperture stellar velocity dispersion (\sigma_ap), stellar mass (M_sps), and galaxy size (R_e) for a sample of \sim 150,000 early-type galaxies from SDSS/DR7 to place constraints on the stellar initial mass…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-04 Aaron A. Dutton , Andrea V. Maccio' , J. Trevor Mendel , Luc Simard

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Richard B. Larson

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