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Related papers: A Universal Stellar Initial Mass Function? A Criti…

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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

(abridged) The {stellar IMF} has been found to be essentially invariant. While some apparent differences are seen, the uncertainties inherent to this game do not allow a firm conclusion to be made that the IMF varies systematically with…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 Pavel Kroupa , Carsten Weidner

The combination of a finite time-scale for star formation, rapid early stellar evolution and rapid stellar-dynamical processes imply that the stellar IMF cannot be inferred for any star cluster independently of its age (the Cluster IMF…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-08-10 Pavel Kroupa

Recent work has suggested that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is not universal, but rather is correlated with galaxy stellar mass, stellar velocity dispersion, or morphological type. In this paper, we investigate variations of the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-05 A. A. Dutton , T. Treu , B. J. Brewer , P. J. Marshall , M. W. Auger , M. Barnabe , D. C. Koo , A. S. Bolton , L. V. E. Koopmans

A brief review is given of the basic observed features of the stellar IMF, and also of some of the theoretical ideas and simulations that may help to explain these features. The characteristic stellar mass of order one solar mass may derive…

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

Does the IMF vary? Is it significantly different in metal-rich environments than in metal-poor ones? Theoretical work predicts this to be the case. But in order to provide robust empirical evidence for this, the researcher must understand…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Pavel Kroupa

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental property in the measurement of stellar masses and galaxy star formation histories. In this work we focus on the most massive galaxies in the nearby universe…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-06-29 Meng Gu , Jenny Greene , Andrew B. Newman , Christina Kreisch , Matthew Quenneville , Chung-Pei Ma , John P. Blakeslee

The study of young stellar populations has revealed that most stars are in binary or higher order multiple systems. In this study the influence on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of large quantities of unresolved multiple massive…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 C. Weidner , P. Kroupa , T. Maschberger

Analyses of strong gravitational lenses, galaxy-scale kinematics, and absorption line stellar population synthesis (SPS) have all concluded that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies within the massive early-type galaxy (ETG)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-11-29 Alexa Villaume , Jean Brodie , Charlie Conroy , Aaron J. Romanowsky , Pieter van Dokkum

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 commonly interpreted to be a scale-invariant probability density distribution function (PDF) such that many small clusters yield the same IMF as one massive cluster of the same combined number of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-02-22 Zhiqiang Yan , Tereza Jerabkova , Pavel Kroupa

Statistical sampling from the stellar initial mass function (IMF) for all star-forming regions in the Galaxy would lead to the prediction of ~1000 Msun stars unless there is a rapid turn-down in the IMF beyond several hundred solar masses.…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Bruce G. Elmegreen

Recent results indicate the stellar initial mass function is not a strong function of star-forming environment or ``initial conditions'' (e.g. Meyer et al. 2000). Some studies suggest that a universal IMF may extend to sub-stellar masses…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 M. R. Meyer , J. Greissl , M. Kenworthy , D. McCarthy

The turnover in the stellar initial mass function (IMF) at low mass suggests the presence of two independent mass functions that combine in different ways above and below a characteristic mass given by the thermal Jeans mass in the cloud.…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Bruce Elmegreen

The hypothesis of a universal initial mass function (IMF) -- motivated by observations in nearby stellar systems -- has been recently challenged by the discovery of a systematic variation of the IMF with the central velocity dispersion,…

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 suggest that the intrinsic, stellar initial mass function (IMF) follows a power-law slope gamma=2, inherited from hierarchical fragmentation of molecular clouds into clumps and clumps into stars. The well-known, logarithmic Salpeter…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-30 M. S. Oey

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is predicted to depend upon the temperature of gas in star-forming molecular clouds. The introduction of an additional parameter, $T_{IMF}$ , into photometric template fitting, allows galaxies to be…

Several recent observational studies have concluded that the initial mass function (IMF) of stars varies systematically with galaxy properties such as velocity dispersion. In this paper, we investigate the effect of linking the circular…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-18 Sean L. McGee , Ryosuke Goto , Michael L. Balogh